Philip Roth (a famous author) once said that if you don't read a novel in two weeks, then you don't really read it. He's talking about the necessity of focus, the necessity of becoming emotionally and intellectually enmeshed in a narrative for it to be truly entertaining and worthwhile. I agree.

Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age was a near thing. I just couldn't get into it. Perhaps it was the sometimes unnecessary minutiae of description, for example a five page description of a mural. Or maybe the disjointed plot, which only kicks into full gear in the last half of the book. Or maybe that I didn't quite believe the world building: in Stephenson's view of the future, nation-states have been replaced by smaller phyles (i.e. communities or organizations), such as the stuffy, archaic neo-Victorians who are the primary focus of the plot. I didn't agree that the rise of ubiquitous nanotechnology would dissolve the nation state or that the world would remain largely poor and polluted.

But then, with about 100 pages to go, it all clicked into place. I understood the appeal of Victorian sexuality. I understood the Eastern conflict between acceptance of Western technology and Western philosophy. I realized how little I truly knew about the history of China pre-Industrial age - that I might know the facts but have not developed a clear understanding of the tone or texture of those people. One of the book's primary characters, Hackworth, found his place - he was not just an engineer but a genius. I saw the parallels between Nell's primer, a penultimate choose-your-own-adventure adaptive book meant to instruct young ladies in independent and intelligent thought; her ghost-mother, the ractive (interactive) actress Miranda; and the hundreds of thousands of Chinese girls, orphaned by civil war. I realized that the stories found in the Primer were not meant to be mere allegories of Nell's life but a story within its own right. A book within a book if you will.

In short, Diamond Age became more than just a static stamping of ink on a page. It infiltrated my mind and became more than just a story. It became my story. And isn't that the great wondrous paradox of books? Their mutability. A million people can read the exact same words and yet each will be reading a different story.