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Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

When I mentioned to a friend that I’m reading Cryptonomicon, he asked “what took you so long?” Good question; I was offered the book twice before and refused. Why? It’s too damn long. 900 page. Being a slow reader (~225wpm, I’m working on it, btw) I shy away from these long books because I know it will take me ages to finish them, if ever. This problem also makes me think very hard before committing to a book, so I basically need to know it’s good before I read it. It’s really hard for authors to get into “Saar’s book club” (unlike Oprah, I do my research…) For example, Michael Crichton has been accepted to the club long ago (but he’s on probation now because too many of his books were made into Hollywood movies and his latest ones seem to be solely written for that purpose.)

All of this is a long winded excuse for not listening to JJ and HS and grabbing this book earlier. It called to me from the library shelves of my designated college here in Cambridge (Darwin), so in a moment of determination I checked it out. It’s fantastic. It’s been a week of low productivity and long nights trying to finish the book and I enjoyed every minute of it. I needed to get back to my “regular” schedule so today I had a reading marathon and I’m done.

It’s been a long time since a book occupied my mind even when I was not reading it; it’s one of those books that make you want to go home early, make some tea and read for hours. I won’t give a description of the book because I can say without reservation “just read it!”

SaarStars: 4.5/5
(Half a point dinged for the length and the unanswered questions left open despite it!)

P.S: Stephenson has written a prequel trilogy called “The Baroque Cycle” that takes place in the 17^th and 18^th centuries with the ancestors of the characters in Cryptonomicon. Each one of those is 900 pages long; I shouldn’t get near that library if I want to finish my PhD on time :)

P.S.2: I do realize that this is not a proper review, more like an order to go read a book. But, most of you know me and my style, so based on that and other reviews, you can make up your mind.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 26th, 2006 at 1:17 am and is filed under reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.