Cryptonomicon

Rating:
Summary: ...
Review: Cryptonomicon had a big chance of failing. It's a large book, over 1000 pages, which continually bounces between WWII and "present day" while juggling between several main characters. Not to mention the frequent several page rants Stephenson would engage in that simply inform the reader about... well, stuff. It's a recipe for disaster, and according to many of the reviewers it did.

What saved the book for me was how well Stephenson keeps things moving. Each chapter is focused on one of the main characters (Waterhouse of WWII, Randy Waterhouse of present, Shaftoe WWII, and Goto Dengo of WWII) so you are constantly switching between eras and plots. Just when you think you're going to scream if you have to read about another sunken U boat, you get a chapter on cryptic annalysis. This allowed me to plow through good portions of the book in a single sitting.

Perhaps the feature that would deter most readers is the Stephenson's fondness for large, technical descriptions of... everything. And while some authors might BS a lot, judging from the reviews here, most of the stuff Stephenson informs us on is on target. These descriptions facinated me... however, I could see how a lot of audiences would find them to be a bore.

The characters are well written, although the plot is questionable. The ending suggested by the beginning of the book is hardly the one that ends up transpiring. It felt like the book could have gone on for another 500 pages.

Rating:
Summary: Good intro to characters from Baroque Cycle
Review: Waterhouse, Shaftoe & Comstock are all here in the 20th century.

Shaftoe sections are exciting, Waterhouse fairly painful and long long long.

Good for long cruises.


Rating:
Summary: On my current all time "top three list".
Review: I felt compelled to write since I am only woman I know who has read this book. My husband nagged me forever to read it, and around Thanksgiving I was looking for a long, meaty book. Boy, this was it in spades!

First of all, I adored this book. I found it brilliant and profound. The people who see this book as only technically advanced have missed its real brilliance. Some of the most vivid and touching characters in fiction live in the pages of this amazing book. I could easily see this book made into a BBC series. Actors would have a field day with Bobby Shaftoe, Lawrence Waterhouse, Amy Shaftoe and Goto Dengo, to name a few. The way Amy and Randy come to trust each other had real resonance for me (see section on Love and Teeth!) The characters here breathe. There is hacker social ineptitude, academic pomposity, real brilliance, not to mention Love and War over 50 years!

I love the way Neal Stephenson writes (I am reading "Quicksilver" now). Say you view reality as being one big cube and you can only see one face of the cube. When you read Stephenson (for me, at least), it's like having the cube rotated so that you can see more of it. Pretty potent stuff. Also, I have a science background (you might have guessed) but Stephenson has this way of explaining things that is so basic that you can see outside box, too!

Finally, Stephenson has taken heat for his abrupt endings. When I finished Cryptonomicon I found that all the ends did ties together when I mulled it over for a while.

Rating:
Summary: Loved It!
Review: Yep, It's long.
Not everyone will love it; not a problem.
Dan Brown? Too simple, transparent, obvious . . .
I hated finishing the book, I felt like I was letting go of something that had come to mean a lot to me.
I have passed my copy of the book to 4 friends already,
every one of them has felt similarly.
Great Job, Neal!