Andrew answers “I am just about done with the audiobook...”

Simon asked this question about Cryptonomicon:

I am just about done with the audiobook version of Snow Crash and I was wondering if this book is more suited to be read than listened to. Should I get the audiobook or the regular book?

Andrew The books is incredibly long, so I did find some benefits to listening vs reading because I could multi-task. Listen while driving, walking, doing oth…moreThe books is incredibly long, so I did find some benefits to listening vs reading because I could multi-task. Listen while driving, walking, doing other things.

But this is also the downside to listening. Parts of the book were extremely technical and required full attention if I wanted to follow along and I found myself rewinding a bit too often. Stephenson's writing seems to lend itself to frequent non-sequiters, extended metaphors, and rabbit trails which admittedly left me lost more than a few times (I don't have an issue following these parts when reading physically).

A few times in the book he'd go off into a two or three page description of something technical or a loosely related analogy, which through audio, could be a ten minute rabbit trail, and I would lose track of which character this chapter was actually about. I found it easier to read those types of chapters, it was particularly bad when he would start a chapter with an analogy.

Another annoying trait of the audiobook was that sometimes Stephenson would only refer to a character by their last name or title, but since every chapter is about a different character and the context shifts significantly between chapters, it could take a solid 5 minutes to know if the chapter was about Grandpa Waterhouse, or Grandson Waterhouse, or if it was about this soldier, or about that soldier.

This happened to me a lot with the Goto Dengo chapters, which were also harder to keep track of because of the Japanese nomenclature.

Overall I'd say it's a pretty tough audiobook and it can be easy to get lost in all the jargon related to cryptography, military, mathematics, organs, mining, scuba, and East Asian cultures if you're not too familiar. Reading those chapters was far easier on my Kindle where I could use the Kindle Dictionary or X-Ray features. I'd imagine it's easier with a paper copy too since the difficulty is associated with the constant rewinding more than anything.

All that said, I did find the book enjoyable though cumbersome.
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