From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…

Anathem

Neal Stephenson

Why we're reading this: This is a very dense piece by Stephenson. It's not his most accessible work but one of his best. Read it …more
[close] This is a very dense piece by Stephenson. It's not his most accessible work but one of his best. Read it as a sci-fi pick.

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Apr 09, 2011 Kerry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: technology, scifi, iownthis, alternate_earth, metaphysics, science, mathematics, many_worlds, favorites

Ah, I love this book so much.

So recently I re-read The Baroque Cycle. And I loved it. And when I told my Stephenson friends that I was re-reading The Baroque Cycle, more than one of them said "that was good. But I think I liked Anathem even more." And this surprised me -- not because I don't like Anathem, but because I do, because it had seemed so perfect that I guess I sort of thought he wrote it just for me? But I guess other people like it too, which is totally okay.

So reading all of these in ...more

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Dec 07, 2010 Heidi rated it really liked it

Shelves: sff

Ooph, this one was a hard one to start. The first 200 pages or so were a bit slow. Then it got awesome. Brought up interesting worlds, interesting theories, interesting ideas throughout. Then the last 100 or pages were also pretty slow - or at least I was reading them going I want this to be over now.

The book overall was good. I found the ending a bit of a cheat, but I liked the concepts and ideas behind it. I thought the plot brought that to a fairly believable scenario, but not entirely justi ...more

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Jun 24, 2014 Elizabeth added it

It's taken me a long time to get to this one for some reason. In case you're worried, (and also delayed in your reading by a decade), this has all the Stephenson hallmarks: People DIY-ing complex technology because they love technology and hate capitalism in equal measure; Tense encounters between those DIY-ers at lawless frontier outposts; A scene that for some reason goes on for more than 100 pages about 2/3 of the way through the book (in this case, a series of dinner parties discussing the p ...more

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Oct 10, 2011 Kim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2011, challenge-2011, fiction, speculative-fiction

Reading Neal Stephenson's books makes me feel both really smart and really dumb at the same time. I mostly grasp the philosophy and thought processes, but I never get the math. Fortunately, this one has more philosophy than actual math. But I'll still need to read it many more times before I feel like I've got it all. I look forward to it. ...more

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