Andrew ,'Damage'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
I love The Diamond Age!
I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, though, because I know my love for it is not shared by many.
It's hard to recommend a follow-up to Anathem at all, since Anathem is just the best thing Stephenson's done. Snow Crash is a good choice. I'd be interested to know how it reads to someone who has read other Stephenson, actually; a big part of my enjoyment of it was how different it was from anything else I'd read up to that point.
NO!!!! The youngest has left it in his locker at SCHOOL!
Truly, you have a demon child. You may want to consider leaving him out of your will.
You may want to consider leaving him out of your will
I told him that I was spending his half of the inheritance on travel when I retire now!
Oh, yeah, I liked Snow Crash too. Maybe I'll do a re-read one of these days.
You know, if Melville was writing today, I'm betting Moby Dick would be a multi-modal book, with hyperlinks to stuff about whaling and the world of the book.
The Diamond Age is my favorite Stephenson, too. Though I haven't fit Anathem into that list in my head, yet (to even enter the list, a novel must be read at least twice, and I've only read it once thus far), and it has a chance to make it to the top.
My current list is:
1) The Diamond Age
2) Cryptonomicon
3) Snow Crash
4) Zodiac
Quicksilver never made it to the list (I didn't even finish it ONE time, though I intend to someday - I was enjoying it as one enjoys a slog. Much like I'm enjoying Anna Karenina in small bits between other books.)
I would suggest reading Snow Crash next, because it is compulsively readable. Then read the others at will. I honestly couldn't tell you whether you would prefer Cryptonomicon or The Diamond Age without knowing you fairly well.
I loved The Diamond Age. but i have tons of Stephenson I haven't read -- like Anatham
And there's an iPad in The Diamond Age.
I think I need to re-read Moby Dick. Maybe skipping the infodump parts.
I found I appreciated all the whales and whaling stuff much more the second and subsequent readings of Moby Dick. It's like swimming in a grand river of words.
I haven't tackled Anathem yet. There are times in my life when I don't feel up to tackling a doorstop book. I loved Snow Crash, but I should reread it after years online. It is the book in which Stephenson posits that the U.S. does four things better than the rest of the world: movies, music, software and high-speed pizza delivery.
Is now a good time for me to pipe up with how much I hated Cryptonomicon? Hated. I threw it across the room, damaging its shiny, shiny cover. This is where you all gasp because it is shocking to damage a book. And
on purpose!
Awful! But I hated it that much. Finished it though, because I am a completist, if evidently something of a masochist.
Could not bear the race issues.