Sunday, September 11, 2005
Cryptonomicon
I seldom read novels, really. Well, I seldom read them to the end, and I am often disappointed when I do, feeling that I have wasted a lot of time for very little long-term gain.
Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon is 1,152 pages long, in the crappy paperback volume that I am going to throw away the minute I finish it, probably late tonight.
It takes a lot of clever writing and plotting to keep me going on a novel of this size. A few laughs also help, and I find this book one of the most amusing things that I have read in 20 years of so, since I read Enderby, by Anthony Burgess. It is also the kind of book that whips your head around a few times, so that afterwards, you think a little differently.
I read a book on the history of codes and ciphers when I was in high school, and it interested me a lot, though it got only as far as the Vigenere scheme. Neal's book goes a great deal further, because cryptography has gone much further.
But really it is the humor and entertaining similes that will force me to buy a better copy someday and reread it.
Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon is 1,152 pages long, in the crappy paperback volume that I am going to throw away the minute I finish it, probably late tonight.
It takes a lot of clever writing and plotting to keep me going on a novel of this size. A few laughs also help, and I find this book one of the most amusing things that I have read in 20 years of so, since I read Enderby, by Anthony Burgess. It is also the kind of book that whips your head around a few times, so that afterwards, you think a little differently.
I read a book on the history of codes and ciphers when I was in high school, and it interested me a lot, though it got only as far as the Vigenere scheme. Neal's book goes a great deal further, because cryptography has gone much further.
But really it is the humor and entertaining similes that will force me to buy a better copy someday and reread it.
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