Thoughts on reading Cryptonomicon*

[brigdh]

Man, Neal Stephenson is so much smarter than I am.

At least as regards math. I like word problems and proofs and logic games, but this sort of pure number theorizing is way outside of my ability to grasp intuitively. At least the characters are interesting enough that I don't care if I don't always understand what they're talking about.


*Yes, I know, I should have read this ages ago. But I started at the other end of Neal Stephenson's body of work and read my way backwards to this one; I'd been putting it off because it's so big and I don't particularly care about either WWII or codes.

Comments

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I started reading that book at the beginning of my depression and could just not get through it. I hope I can at some point.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Stephenson seems to be one of those writers where either you love his style, or you hate it. I'm quite fond of him, but I know a lot of other people who can't stand his books.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I love his style-- the math just got to be too much for me, and the knowledge of the sad fate of Alan Turing.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I just discovered it last night, when I was looking up something else from the book on wikipedia and wandered over to his entry. Now every time he shows up in the book, I feel like D: D: D:! I'd had no idea.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I did the same thing! And I remembered hearing about "Turing machines" way back when and yes. Exactly. And I just wasn't in a good mental place and ugh. Someday I'll read it though. YES I WILL.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'd heard of Alan Turing, and I knew he was dead, and if I'd thought about it, I probably would have realized that he'd been doing stuff recently enough that he should still be alive under normal circumstances, but I just hadn't known.

Um. I really like the book otherwise, though! And think it is worth reading. It's sort of funny to read this after the Baroque Cycle, though, because of all the overlaps between the two.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Well, there's lots of other things that could have happened. That were. Yeah.

I do want to finish it! I just need a good space of time to try to read it in, cause depression aside, grabbing bits during lunch break just wasn't cutting it.

[weirdquark]

Hee. I tried reading that this summer, and only managed to keep going because I liked the math. Codes! So cool! Yes, I did do better on the math and logic portions of insert-standardized-test than I did on the verbal sections, why do you ask? Also, my Java class has now taught me the code I need to make the Big Red Button That Doesn't Do Anything, and I find this awesome. Completely useless, but awesome.

(I did eventually muster some interest in the characters and what was going on, but it took a while to make myself stop skipping the bits without the logic games and things and actually read the bits with plot.)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I'm really liking it. Granted, I'm only about 300 pages in, but it's going very fast so far. Plus, I always feel like I learn so much from his books; it's cool.

I always did better on the verbal sections, but then last year I took the GRE and scored way higher on the math/logic. I have no idea what caused that.

[annoyedwabbit.livejournal.com]

Heh. I glazed over when it came to the math and skipped all those parts. My engineering friends thought they were awesome, though.

I still can't get through the third Baroque Series book. (The Confusion? Or is it The System of the World?) I just stopped caring. Sad.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Yeah, that's sorta what I've been doing. At least I know enough about the internet to follow most of the hacking information dumps.

I tore through that the majority of that one in a day, but it was a day when I was I literally entirely disconnected from having anything to do except sit and read for eight or ten hours; I was in a tent in the middle of Nevada with no internet or radio or cell connection, and most of the other people had gone off for the day either to hike (which I didn't want to) or to drive to the nearest town (which I would have liked, but I had just had a fight with one of these people and we were currently not speaking, and so I wasn't invited). I agree that it wasn't as interesting as the first two in the trilogy, though.