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Mar. 27th, 2008 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSo because I am a genius, and I always seem to pick up the massive books to read when I am just finishing a quarter and starting to dive into work, or just ending a quarter and surrounded in finals, I spent most of my finals week reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.
Cryptonomicon has a very complex plot that follows multiple storylines across two timelines. In the World War II era, codebreaker Lawrence Waterhouse attempts to keep the Axis powers from discovering the failure of their strongest code Enigma, while Marine Bobby Shaftoe becomes caught up in a number of the complex plans surrunding those codes. Randy Waterhouse, fifty years later, gets entangled with the fallout from those events while helping his friend Avi set up a data haven in the Philippines.
I want to say, first, that the book definitely has a good many flaws. It's kind of bloated; like many Stephenson books, it ends suddenly and ambiguously; there are no female POV characters (which especially disappointed me, because it's not like he can't do them) and of the few female characters there are, even the ones that start out interesting end up basically love interests; and there are a few sections during the war in the Phillipines and New Guinea that are kind of problematic - seriously, cannibals? - although not nearly as many as there could have been, especially for a WWII novel. Other things which bothered me, but might not bother other people: Stephenson does not seem to believe in the existence of female geeks; I have absolutely no mathematical or scientific background, and therefore often got lost when he delved into number theory; and while I generally enjoy the satire, I wish he would stop taking potshots at academics, because they're not even clever potshots, just kind of tired and cliched. Also, neither Randy nor Lawrence Waterhouse were quite as interesting to me as Daniel Waterhouse from the prequel The Baroque Cycle.
All this is going to make it sound like I didn't like the book at all; on the contrary, I actually enjoyed it a lot. Stephenson has an interesting and often very funny writing style, the plot is fascinating, and even when I was technically lost I wanted to keep reading to find out what was going on. I did like many of the characters introduced, especially the more minor ones (Avi, Goto Dengo, and Rudy von Hacklheber are all on my favorites list, and I am very happy that Goto Dengo did get to be a POV character.) And in general I tend to find WWII stories extremely interesting. Moreover, it's consistently the sort of book that provokes thought, which is another reason it took me so long to read; even when I disagreed with what Stephenson was doing, or what one of his characters concluded, I still always had room to think about it, which is something of which I very much approve. So I would overall recommend it, but I feel I can't do that without getting into the fair warning first - and I still think The Baroque Cycle is a better set of books.
Cryptonomicon has a very complex plot that follows multiple storylines across two timelines. In the World War II era, codebreaker Lawrence Waterhouse attempts to keep the Axis powers from discovering the failure of their strongest code Enigma, while Marine Bobby Shaftoe becomes caught up in a number of the complex plans surrunding those codes. Randy Waterhouse, fifty years later, gets entangled with the fallout from those events while helping his friend Avi set up a data haven in the Philippines.
I want to say, first, that the book definitely has a good many flaws. It's kind of bloated; like many Stephenson books, it ends suddenly and ambiguously; there are no female POV characters (which especially disappointed me, because it's not like he can't do them) and of the few female characters there are, even the ones that start out interesting end up basically love interests; and there are a few sections during the war in the Phillipines and New Guinea that are kind of problematic - seriously, cannibals? - although not nearly as many as there could have been, especially for a WWII novel. Other things which bothered me, but might not bother other people: Stephenson does not seem to believe in the existence of female geeks; I have absolutely no mathematical or scientific background, and therefore often got lost when he delved into number theory; and while I generally enjoy the satire, I wish he would stop taking potshots at academics, because they're not even clever potshots, just kind of tired and cliched. Also, neither Randy nor Lawrence Waterhouse were quite as interesting to me as Daniel Waterhouse from the prequel The Baroque Cycle.
All this is going to make it sound like I didn't like the book at all; on the contrary, I actually enjoyed it a lot. Stephenson has an interesting and often very funny writing style, the plot is fascinating, and even when I was technically lost I wanted to keep reading to find out what was going on. I did like many of the characters introduced, especially the more minor ones (Avi, Goto Dengo, and Rudy von Hacklheber are all on my favorites list, and I am very happy that Goto Dengo did get to be a POV character.) And in general I tend to find WWII stories extremely interesting. Moreover, it's consistently the sort of book that provokes thought, which is another reason it took me so long to read; even when I disagreed with what Stephenson was doing, or what one of his characters concluded, I still always had room to think about it, which is something of which I very much approve. So I would overall recommend it, but I feel I can't do that without getting into the fair warning first - and I still think The Baroque Cycle is a better set of books.
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Date: 2010-03-23 01:29 am (UTC)The Baroque Cycle
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Date: 2010-03-23 03:24 am (UTC)excuse the sideways musing here
Date: 2010-03-23 04:06 am (UTC)So why do I think it's one of my favorites? I think it's for the same reason that I have called Lawrence of Arabia my favorite movie ever since I saw it, when I'd never before been able to pick out any one movie that I felt deserved the title--it's not just the sudden and unexpected depth and breadth of the pleasure it brought me, but the way that it instantly stood out to me, the way it still stands out to me. Its massive presence has created a sort of a gravity well in my mind, and the experience of it changed me, changed the way I interacted with the world, which is something that very few stand-alone works can do. Diana Wynne Jones, in contrast, is one of my absolute favorite authors in the entire world and probably always will be, has undoubtedly influenced me, but it's the cumulative effect of her books that makes me feel that way, not just any one of them, no matter how much I like them individually.
sideways musing always welcome!
Date: 2010-03-23 04:36 am (UTC)I can rarely pinpoint books that had that kind of impact me after one read (and when I can, it certainly makes them exceptional) . . . but sometimes I will reread a book after years, and in rereading it I'll be able to pinpoint ways it influenced my thoughts in ways I didn't even realize at the time. It makes me wonder which books of the ones I'm reading now will be the ones that have stuck with me in a decade.