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Dec 16, 2009

Conrad rated it:

My friend Stuart's reading this and I stupidly started spoiling one of the best lines in the book (it pops up as Shaftoe's motto) and he was mildly irritated with me. Fortunately for him, he is vastly smarter than me so while he was quite generously acting annoyed he was probably thinking to himself, "Maybe one day I will spoil math and engineering and the details of Riemann zeta functions for Conrad." Now I'm rereading it out of sympathy and it's even better than I remembered.

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5 comments like (31 people liked it)

Sep 01, 2010

Russell rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

9 comments like (12 people liked it)

Apr 08, 2009

Brooke rated it:

*Re-reading this book, started early January 2009

Note: This review is from my blog, circa 2005.

I finished reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson about a week ago. It took me over a month to finish, not because it wasn't great and exciting, but because it was 937 fucking pages long!

I have to say that Neal Stephenson is one of the most interesting and unique authors I have come across in some time now. The book had three main characters/story lines, and each More...

0 comments like (14 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Andrei rated it:

I usually roll my eyes at blurbs on books, especially when they're as reductive and simple as the ones I'm about to cite, but "electrifying" and "a hell of a read" seem like the two most fitting ways to summarize my opinion on this book. I had a tough time putting this down. It's not a challenging book, but it's also not a stupid book and I was surprised to find how "literary" it actually is. Outside of that, and really most importantly, it's an absolute blast to re More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Feb 25, 2009

Michael rated it:

My four-star rating will likely puzzle those friends of mine who have had to listen to me piss and moan about this novel for the past six months. My progress as a reader was, shall we say, embarrassingly slow. (In Stephenson's defense, I tended to put his novel aside after every 200 or so pages and read other things; the book actually moves pretty swiftly considering its size.) But the four-star rating is sincere: I did enjoy this very much, for the most part, and I intend to at last read Snow Crash More...

3 comments like (13 people liked it)

Sep 27, 2007

Chris rated it:

One day I went out shopping for a book. My list of unread, prepurchased titles sat neatly in a stack by my disused fire-place and none of them set me alive with anticipation. I don't know what I wanted really, but I had a vague idea that there was a black book with numbers on the front that was a New York Times bestseller, and I quite fancied something clever related to code breaking or numbers. So I hopped on the subway, rode into Union Square and strolled over to B&N on 17th street and found w More...

0 comments like (11 people liked it)

Feb 27, 2008

Coco rated it:

I'm shocked by the critical acclaim this book received in the sci-fi category but I suppose even a turd can float. Two stars is really pushing it. Maybe a star for the number of laughs I got per 100 pages. This is the work of a technically inept egomaniac. He does have some technical background (he drops Unix hints and anagrams the name of a supposed deity who dies and then later comes back w/ no explanation??) However, it's not enough “savoir faire” for any of the content to make sense. It migh More...

3 comments like (10 people liked it)

Jan 27, 2009

Ben rated it:

Though I'm giving this book four stars, I am a little disappointed in it. For the first time, Stephenson's wordiness got to me. At first, it is all fun and "character building" and enjoyable to read. But after working through 700 pages and still hitting long stretches about Randy's fascination with dust devils as a kid or how he had really bad wisdom teeth years earlier, I got a little frustrated. I had the feeling he was striving for length instead of letting the story dictate the num More...

6 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jul 24, 2008

Erez rated it:

Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming says, that any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. (Including Common Lisp, added Robert Morris)
Lisp, to qoute L. Peter Deutsch, can make you realise that software could be close to executable mathematics.

Cryptonomicon is surprisingly similar to the previous paragraph, both as an analogy to the book, and for the useless use of computer-ba More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Feb 25, 2011

Michelle rated it:

it took me a month to get through this book. amazing, considering my usual speed with the written word, but quite true. this behemoth refused to be devoured in my usual hours-at-a-time fashion, nope. more like very high quality cheesecake, in that it's so rich you can only take a few bites before you need to assimilate.

part of the story is about a WWII GI, who happens to be so gung-ho and talented at both completing difficult missions successfully and staying alive at their comple More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Phil rated it:

I'm an English major. I've read a lot of books. This one, is -- hands down -- my favorite modern fiction novel. I've read it twice, recommended it to others, and I'm sure I'll read it again. There is so much to appreciate here.

It is a semi-historical adventure, so there's something for fiction and non-fiction fans.

The writing is justly verbose at times, and conversationally abrupt at other times. In essence, you find yourself wholly in the minds and bodies of the characte More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Krissa rated it:

I mean, FINE, okay, this is one of the most engrossing books I've ever read. I don't really mean "best" or "best-written", necessarily. I mean, it's a messy sprawling epic that's almost too clever by half and full of hilarious characters and history just-so tweaked to accommodate them and also pure unadulterated geekiness. So it's not really for everyone but boy did I lap it up and then eat my huge slices of humble pie for everyone in my life that's been bugging me to read it More...

7 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Rob rated it:

Though Snow Crash will probably remain my all-time favorite Neal Stephenson novel, Cryptonomicon might take the crown as his best.[†:] As I write this review, I wrapping up my third reading of this novel.

BRIEF ASIDE REGARDING THE TIMING OF THIS THIRD READING: It is probably worth noting my mental state when I cracked the spine on this one for the third time. Stephenson's Anathem had just come out and I could not quite bring myself to drop the cash on the hardcover. But I was over More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Blake rated it:

Stephenson is an amazing writer. He uses the entire first half of the book to establish characters, settings, and background, and the second half to actually tell the story. When you consider that the copy of the book I have is just over 900 pages, that translates into a lot of "marginally interesting but clever reading material" followed by a lot of "this is badass, why didn't I get this far sooner?" which in the end comes out to suck pretty hard, because you become angry More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 12, 2011

Clif rated it:

Aspire for fluency in geek speak? Is "Big Bang Theory" your idea of reality TV? Then I recommend this Moby Dick of nerd novels. Jay Clayton in his book Charles Dickens in Cyberspace calls this book the “ultimate geek novel” (pg. 204-211) and draws attention to the “literary-scientific-engineering-military-industrial-intelligence alliance” that produced discoveries in two eras separated by fifty years, World War II and the Internet age. That's a good concise summary of the book.
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1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Mar 30, 2008

Jeff rated it:

I read this book and I really liked it.

I liked the book a lot, but things about it have made me develop a whole speil. The story was great, interesting historical/thrill fiction. But! He could have easily cut a good 1/3 out of the book and it would have been fine. Mr Stephenson loves taking a long way around to describe things, and to compound the problem, his characters like to take the long way around to say things too. So you have this recursive loop of masturbation.

For ex More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 11, 2007

Matt rated it:

I stake the claim that this novel is the "Catch 22" of the new millennium. Smacking of Heller and borrowing somewhat from Pynchon, this novel also stakes new ground and weaves an engaging yet intricate plot. There are also many asides which encompass basic cryptographic theory, History and mechanics of modern finance and economics, Hacking methods including "Van Eck Phreaking" and EMP pulses, Music Theory, and speculations upon the future and impact information will have.
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0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 25, 2011

Keely rated it:

Neal Stephenson likes to throw weird shit together and see if it sticks. The more recent his book, the more likely it is to resemble a schizophrenic's curio cabinet. Your average Phillip Pullman will add a little wacky trepanning to his fantasy trilogy for that refined edge of esoteria.

Meanwhile, Stephenson will have an exiled member of Italian royalty who works in 'demolition real estate' and knows Escrima thanks to an intense trepanning session with Horace Walpole, Duke Orford. Wh More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 25, 2009

Nicholas rated it:

This is a failure on several levels.

Firstly, I did that This American Life offer with Audible so I could try it for a few weeks and get a free book out of the deal.

First off, Audible isn't particularly good. Though one credit generally will get you a book a month, their definition of a book can mean the first 4th of a Stephen King novel. You also lose all access to these DRM encrypted files when you drop the service, so I doubt I'll be keeping it.

The second is More...

7 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 25, 2009

khalil rated it:

not up to the hype, although worth reading if you like historical novels. (I can't fairly evaluate Stephenson books that aren't Snow Crash or The Diamond Age. No matter now good they are, they will never be that much fun.)

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 15, 2009

WK rated it:

3.5/4.0

This is a brilliant book.

Not science fiction, really. More like history-of-science fiction. A World War II cryptography/adventure/treasure hunting story, with an overlarge dose of modern international computer corporation politics thrown in for good measure. Full of digressions, which are part of the feel of the story. If you don't like getting sidetracked, then avoid it. Unfortunately, even with all its brilliance, it has notable problems.

1) The ending More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 03, 2011

Laura rated it:

As usual Neal Stephenson gives us a thoughtful view on the role of technology and society - this time however, the philosophy is buried a bit deeper than the other novels I've read by him. It would be easy to read this book as a simple, exciting multi-generation spanning adventure of war, code writers and code breakers, a myriad of pieces of stories that all weave together in the end. Quite the thrilling tale all on his own. However, there's a deeper story here: one that asks what does true n More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 29, 2008

Sean rated it:

Neal Stephenson is brilliant. Quite obviously so. And one of his strengths lies in writing books that make abstruse, convoluted niche subjects feel approachable and exciting to the average reader. His attention to detail and his playful tangents, asides and divagations are charming, witty and often fascinating.

Unfortunately this does not always translate into well-written and well-structured narratives. To put it mildly, Cryptonomicon drags. It meanders. Occasionally it stops complet More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 18, 2007

Tracey rated it:

t's been a while since I've had to work so hard on a book, but Cryptonomicon was well worth it.

Randy Waterhouse, a computer whiz and all around nebbish, is the grandson of Lawrence Waterhouse, a math whiz and all around nebbish; the book follows their semi-separate stories. Lawrence is recruited by the US Armed Forces to break various crypto codes during WWII, while Randy works for a company that is developing a secure data storage facility in the South Seas.

Their lives More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 08, 2007

Jennifer rated it:

If Neal Stephenson hired an editor for this book, it would have been more popular than Da Vinci Code. The plot is very interesting. It is a parallel narrative that oscillates between the stories of several men participating on all sides of World War II and the stories of their descendants who are in the midst of a technology boom and are exploring the new world of online banking and a completely electronic currency. The book was written in 1999, so it lacks the typical inclination of new interna More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 06, 2007

Jen rated it:

So far this book is great! It's pretty cerebral so I can't really read it when I'm tired or just want some mind-numbing entertainment... it's got complicated concepts and is always jumping all over the place, timeline-wise, so it keeps you on your toes! But that's why I'm a fan of Neal Stephenson to begin with- sometimes you need to sink your brain teeth into something that might actually stimulate some ideas. ;)

Alright finished it and it was awesome! Here's the thing- normally I More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 08, 2008

Michael rated it:

A powerhouse novel written for nerds by a nerd. My favorite character changed as I read and in the end I was rooting for all of them.

Bobbie Shafto's bright and fair,
Combing down his yellow hair,
He's my ain for evermair,
Hey for Bobbie Shafto.

Bobbie Shafto, went to Court,
All in Gold and Silver Wrought,
Like a Grandee as he ought,
Bonnie Bobbie Shafto.

All the Ribbons flying about,
All the ladies looking out,
Clapping More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 16, 2009

Benjamin rated it:

It's Stephenson. It's didactic. It's verbose. It's massive. It's 900 pages, at least 200 of which are pure research vomit, thinly disguised as dialogue. Yet for all this, very readable. And it appears Neal finally figured out how to end his huge, sprawling stories in a satisfactory, even elegant manner. (It took Stephen King all the way until The Dark Tower to manage it, so don't think I'm belittling the achievement.)

Four stars! I'm glad I read it, I learned a shit-ton of stu More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 22, 2009

Billy rated it:

Don't be distubed by the size of this beast.
It's well worth the effort.
I don't even know how to classify this thing.
I'd make a pie chart if I could, but let me break it down for you:
49% historical fiction.
36% cryptology.
7% cyber-thriller.
5% giggity-goo!
3% deep thoughts about the proper method of eating Cap'n Crunch, including the perfect milk-to-cereal ratio.
It's very interesting and involves two parallel storylines, one in WWII and one in th More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 12, 2008

Leif rated it:

This is the first book I've encountered that I both enjoyed and hated to read. Stephenson's writing makes me laugh out loud, and his choice of using WWII characters, scenery, and the defining contradictions therein encourages mental comparison with the best of Catch-22. The book's sheer length is enough to quell even the most enthusiastic reader at times, though, and the numerous tangential explanations of technological phenomena gets a bit tedious for this particular code monkey. Read if you en More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

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