New Neal Stephenson Book Out - Anathem

Re:New Neal Stephenson Book Out - Anathem by quasimojo on Sunday September 21, 2008 @12:22PM (#310438)

painful. put it down at page 100. already recycled. oh i know what you are thinking, i must be some sort of caveman who prefers michael crichton. nonsense. when i read fiction, i want to have some fun. this book just isn't fun. stephenson knows how to write fun books. snow crash was a literal page turner...why do you stay up all night turning pages? because the book is fun.

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Re:New Neal Stephenson Book Out - Anathem by agl on Sunday September 21, 2008 @02:15PM (#310500)

I'm only half way in at the moment, but I must reply and say that I think this book is excellent. It may have helped that I did the first couple of hundred pages on a flight so was a captive audience (well, unless I wanted to watch "Son of Rambo"), but I don't remember feeling that it was a slog.

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Re:New Neal Stephenson Book Out - Anathem by omouse on Sunday September 21, 2008 @08:47PM (#310700)

Son of Rambow is a good movie. Really really good. A feel-good movie if you will. I can't believe you didn't want to watch it!

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Re:New Neal Stephenson Book Out - Anathem by Zev on Sunday September 21, 2008 @02:07PM (#310494)

I'm about 100 pages in as well, not about to stop though. Stephenson one of the few current authors that's not afraid to spend a hundred pages setting up the backstory for everything going on. Which accounts for the beginning of some of his books being exceptionally long and not the most interesting bits of writing that he's done. But the rest of the book - once you get into it - generally makes up for it.

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Re:New Neal Stephenson Book Out - Anathem by jamesbritt on Sunday September 21, 2008 @02:06PM (#310493)

"... why do you stay up all night turning pages? because the book is fun."

Well, sometimes, but "fun" is not how I'd describe the works of David Foster Wallace or Rick Moody, yet they (often, but not always) keep me engage with challenging use of language and structure.

Basically, it's enjoyable to have new stuff to think about, and that can happen in a number of ways.

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Re:New Neal Stephenson Book Out - Anathem by hugh on Sunday September 21, 2008 @04:16PM (#310581)

snow crash was a literal page turner

A literal page turner, as in you literally turned the pages?

Seriously though, as I recall an awful lot of Snow Crash's exposition came from a series of interminable dialogues between Hiro and his AI librarian.

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Re:New Neal Stephenson Book Out - Anathem by davidw on Sunday September 21, 2008 @03:15PM (#310532)

I think to determine if your tastes are aligned with others' (me, for instance), you'd have to say whether you liked Cryptonimicon and the Baroque cycle. I loved the first, and enjoyed the second.

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Re:New Neal Stephenson Book Out - Anathem by Prrometheus on Sunday September 21, 2008 @03:19PM (#310534)

The lady at the book store said it was great but hard to get into.

You do know that Stephenson's latest works have been nothing like "Snowcrash" or "The Diamond Age", right?

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Re:New Neal Stephenson Book Out - Anathem by DanielBMarkham on Saturday September 27, 2008 @05:19PM (#317151)

"caveman who prefers michael crichton"

That's a damn-bigoted remark.

I like chrichton. And what the hell is wrong with cavemen?

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