Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
Treasure hunting! World War II! Cryptography! And three family dynasties that you will want to know more about.
I love everything I've read by Neal Stephenson. This is quite long but is worth the read. I am guessing on the date I read this as I wasn't logging my books faithfully back then.
What an amazing work of historical fiction. If you're daunted by deep dives into mathematics and numbers you may find parts of this book drag, but stick it out--your reward is a masterfully crafted multi-timeline, edge-of-the-seat reading.
Would have given 3 and a half if I could. Although I appreciate the meandering style, this wandered a bit too much. Great ending didn't quite justify the wind-up.
adventurous
challenging
informative
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I liked [b:Seveneves|22816087|Seveneves|Neal Stephenson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1449142000s/22816087.jpg|42299347]; until now, my only exposure to [a:Neal Stephenson|545|Neal Stephenson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1430920344p2/545.jpg].
I've come to realize that Neal Stephenson's voice is very obvious in his writing. I try to give authors the benefit of the doubt when reading, especially fiction, that the views being expressed are the views of a fictional character and not of the author himself/herself. Additionally, I'd like to avoid being too thin-skinned when the subject of a particularly distasteful view is being espoused. But in Cryptonomicon, we're treated to misogynistic, sexist, and racist views from more than one character in more than one timeline across the breadth of the book. So... It becomes difficult to walk away without the impression that we're hearing the views of Stephenson through the mouths of his characters. Cryptonomicon takes on the vantage point of a white, religious man living in the industrialized world. It's obvious, and it's exhausting.
Addressing religion, or in this case the lack thereof:
"In other circumstances, the religious reference would make Randy uncomfortable, but here it seems like the only appropriate thing to say. Think what you will about religious people, they always have something to say at times like this. What would an atheist come up with? Yes, the organisms inhabiting that submarine must have lost their higher neural functions over a prolonged period of time and eventually turned into pieces of rotten meat. So what?"
The label "atheist" says exactly one thing about a person - that they don't believe in gods. I can tell you what at least one atheist would say about suffocating sailors in a sinking submarine: war is the ugliest, most despicable thing humans do to each other. It represents a failure of diplomacy, understanding, empathy, and creativity. The people that get hurt by it are rarely the people responsible for those failings. All this is made uglier still by the realization that there is no evidence to suggest that after a torturous death anything happened for those sailors except the sudden, permanent cessation of the proverbial music.
"...the post-modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz. society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo-Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with deviations from what they saw as the norm. Whereas people who were wired into a church were like UNIX system administrators who, while they might not understand everything, at least had some documentation, some FAQs and How-tos and README files, providing some guidance on what to do when things got out of whack. They were, in other words, capable of displaying adaptability."
This line basically killed the book for me. It's the second attempt at high-roading in the book and reads precisely like the drivel I've learned to expect from Midwestern bigots who've never actually read the Bible. The point of the book is that a god created a world in which the only way for his creations to be accepted was by murdering his son... Think about that. **The guy is making the fucking rules and those are the rules he lands on!** And it's not even a quality he admires only in himself. The founder of the Abrahamic religions (Abram, later Abraham) is chosen by this god for displaying the exact same murderous tendencies! I'll tell you one thing, if an atheist hears a voice in his head telling him to murder his son, he might see a shrink rather than looking for his butchering knife and starting a religion.
Furthermore, this is the first time I've seen Christians characterized as *more* flexible than atheists. /rant
Addressing misogyny and sexism next:
There are *a lot* of masturbation scenes in this book. In several of those scenes, masturbation is the tool used by the character in the given scene as a second best solution due to the lack of women in the scene. The women's purpose is to serve the character's need to ejaculate on a schedule to remain productive in their *very important work.* If I'm being vague here, it's not to avoid spoilers but because this exact scene formulation happens to two different characters. One in each timeline. The only details that the scenes share are those listed above.
At one point, late in the book, one of the characters literally passes out screaming after seeing his girlfriend's disfigured face. (She caught leprosy or some such unlikely form of disfigurement... Does it really matter though?)
Some parts of this book are indistinguishable from a Penthouse book. At least with Penthouse one knows what one is getting into... Particularly late in the book; one gratuitous sex scene after another.
Finally racism:
The non-white races in this book are referred to by a host of pseudo-slurs throughout. And not in a way to illustrate the way that characters would have referred to opposing forces during the war. They almost certainly did do just that. But in a way that made it plain that the setting of the book was taken as a license for the *author* to refer to those races in those ways. I almost didn't notice it. But by the end, it really starts to be a grind.
Finally, Stephenson is said to a belong to a school of thought called maximalism. A reaction of sorts against the more popular minimalism. They have the playful axiom "more is more." I have to say... After reading this book... More can be more, but it's not simply by being more. The reductio in this case might be: adding adverbs to every sentence in a book does not make the book better simply by making it longer. The "more" still needs to deserve to be there to actually improve the book. This book was three times longer than it should have been. Mainly due to pointless digressions that had me backtracking on more than one occasion, and stuffed with sex/masturbation scenes.
I've come to realize that Neal Stephenson's voice is very obvious in his writing. I try to give authors the benefit of the doubt when reading, especially fiction, that the views being expressed are the views of a fictional character and not of the author himself/herself. Additionally, I'd like to avoid being too thin-skinned when the subject of a particularly distasteful view is being espoused. But in Cryptonomicon, we're treated to misogynistic, sexist, and racist views from more than one character in more than one timeline across the breadth of the book. So... It becomes difficult to walk away without the impression that we're hearing the views of Stephenson through the mouths of his characters. Cryptonomicon takes on the vantage point of a white, religious man living in the industrialized world. It's obvious, and it's exhausting.
Addressing religion, or in this case the lack thereof:
"In other circumstances, the religious reference would make Randy uncomfortable, but here it seems like the only appropriate thing to say. Think what you will about religious people, they always have something to say at times like this. What would an atheist come up with? Yes, the organisms inhabiting that submarine must have lost their higher neural functions over a prolonged period of time and eventually turned into pieces of rotten meat. So what?"
The label "atheist" says exactly one thing about a person - that they don't believe in gods. I can tell you what at least one atheist would say about suffocating sailors in a sinking submarine: war is the ugliest, most despicable thing humans do to each other. It represents a failure of diplomacy, understanding, empathy, and creativity. The people that get hurt by it are rarely the people responsible for those failings. All this is made uglier still by the realization that there is no evidence to suggest that after a torturous death anything happened for those sailors except the sudden, permanent cessation of the proverbial music.
"...the post-modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz. society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo-Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with deviations from what they saw as the norm. Whereas people who were wired into a church were like UNIX system administrators who, while they might not understand everything, at least had some documentation, some FAQs and How-tos and README files, providing some guidance on what to do when things got out of whack. They were, in other words, capable of displaying adaptability."
This line basically killed the book for me. It's the second attempt at high-roading in the book and reads precisely like the drivel I've learned to expect from Midwestern bigots who've never actually read the Bible. The point of the book is that a god created a world in which the only way for his creations to be accepted was by murdering his son... Think about that. **The guy is making the fucking rules and those are the rules he lands on!** And it's not even a quality he admires only in himself. The founder of the Abrahamic religions (Abram, later Abraham) is chosen by this god for displaying the exact same murderous tendencies! I'll tell you one thing, if an atheist hears a voice in his head telling him to murder his son, he might see a shrink rather than looking for his butchering knife and starting a religion.
Furthermore, this is the first time I've seen Christians characterized as *more* flexible than atheists. /rant
Addressing misogyny and sexism next:
There are *a lot* of masturbation scenes in this book. In several of those scenes, masturbation is the tool used by the character in the given scene as a second best solution due to the lack of women in the scene. The women's purpose is to serve the character's need to ejaculate on a schedule to remain productive in their *very important work.* If I'm being vague here, it's not to avoid spoilers but because this exact scene formulation happens to two different characters. One in each timeline. The only details that the scenes share are those listed above.
At one point, late in the book, one of the characters literally passes out screaming after seeing his girlfriend's disfigured face. (She caught leprosy or some such unlikely form of disfigurement... Does it really matter though?)
Some parts of this book are indistinguishable from a Penthouse book. At least with Penthouse one knows what one is getting into... Particularly late in the book; one gratuitous sex scene after another.
Finally racism:
The non-white races in this book are referred to by a host of pseudo-slurs throughout. And not in a way to illustrate the way that characters would have referred to opposing forces during the war. They almost certainly did do just that. But in a way that made it plain that the setting of the book was taken as a license for the *author* to refer to those races in those ways. I almost didn't notice it. But by the end, it really starts to be a grind.
Finally, Stephenson is said to a belong to a school of thought called maximalism. A reaction of sorts against the more popular minimalism. They have the playful axiom "more is more." I have to say... After reading this book... More can be more, but it's not simply by being more. The reductio in this case might be: adding adverbs to every sentence in a book does not make the book better simply by making it longer. The "more" still needs to deserve to be there to actually improve the book. This book was three times longer than it should have been. Mainly due to pointless digressions that had me backtracking on more than one occasion, and stuffed with sex/masturbation scenes.
I got this one because it was recommended to me as a "perfect book" by a fellow technology geek. I'm a little over 5 hours into the 42 hour audiobook, and I couldn't disagree more. This book is a slogfest. There are four distinct characters that I am having a hard time keeping track of... Lawrence Waterhouse (often referred to as just Waterhouse), Bobby Shaftoe (mostly just Shaftoe), Randy Waterhouse (who is referred to as Randy, but shares Lawrence's last name), and Amy Shaftoe (who I confused for Avey when I read the description, because she wasn't in the book until around the 4.5 hour mark). Lawrence is the only one that I am interested in, but the author spends way more time with Randy and Bobby. Even Amy seems more interesting, and I have just met her character.
I didn't know what the hell was going on until I went back to read the book's description again. I get it now..... but this book is killing me with details I don't care about. Bobby's time in the marines and Randy's failed business ventures do not seem to be pushing the plot forward in any way. Let's get back to Lawrence and Alan Turing's science of cryptography... that's what I came for. I keep thinking about the "Imagination Game" and how that movie had a distinct perspective and story to tell. This one is a meandering masterclass in technical writing ability that is going nowhere. I believe Mr. Stephenson has a lot of talent, but I don't want to be impressed, I want to enjoy a solid story. It may get there eventually, but I'm starting to lose hope.
Part of me wants to just pack this one up and save 600MB on my cell phone. I'm not going to sit through 40+ hours of an audiobook for <10 hours of goodness sprinkled throughout. I'll give it more time, but so far count me majorly disappointed.
To be continued...
I finally gave up about 25% of the way through. I only relented to listening to the audiobook when nothing else was available, and still managed to be bored. I had to keep reminding myself to pay attention and figure out who the story was following (and in which time period). The book is way too padded and jumps around too randomly. I'm saving the storage on my phone and moving on.
I didn't know what the hell was going on until I went back to read the book's description again. I get it now..... but this book is killing me with details I don't care about. Bobby's time in the marines and Randy's failed business ventures do not seem to be pushing the plot forward in any way. Let's get back to Lawrence and Alan Turing's science of cryptography... that's what I came for. I keep thinking about the "Imagination Game" and how that movie had a distinct perspective and story to tell. This one is a meandering masterclass in technical writing ability that is going nowhere. I believe Mr. Stephenson has a lot of talent, but I don't want to be impressed, I want to enjoy a solid story. It may get there eventually, but I'm starting to lose hope.
Part of me wants to just pack this one up and save 600MB on my cell phone. I'm not going to sit through 40+ hours of an audiobook for <10 hours of goodness sprinkled throughout. I'll give it more time, but so far count me majorly disappointed.
To be continued...
I finally gave up about 25% of the way through. I only relented to listening to the audiobook when nothing else was available, and still managed to be bored. I had to keep reminding myself to pay attention and figure out who the story was following (and in which time period). The book is way too padded and jumps around too randomly. I'm saving the storage on my phone and moving on.