1. 01 November 2008

    Anathem

    Neal Stephenson

    33 days ago

    Stephenson rocks once more. There’s such a great fantastical quality to his books, everything is stretched so close to absurdity but in such a way that you really just want to believe it. It’s great. This book makes me want a bolt, chord and sphere—how cool would it be if those were my three possessions?

    Started it monday, finished it up on the soccer bus ride last night. That gives me a good burn rate of about 200 pages a day.

    Stephenson’s bent here is almost spiritual. Where in his earlier books it was more techno–social (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Diamond age; at least as I remember them, rereads are now under consideration), and where the System of the World was historical and philosophic, here Stephenson takes his compelling and marvellous storytelling and wraps it around systems of existence and belief. There’s a very Emersonian transcendentalism (Emerson is even mentioned as an aside somewhere late in the book.)

    Which is great, I love it when a book comes along that meshes with my insufficiently explored innate feelings towards some subject, here that of ‘god/religion/whatever.’

    Nothing is more important that that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hum you in and come at you in so many ways. Fraa Orolo, 109

    Why is religion such a universal in societies throughout history?

    That’s right, people have a need to feel that they are part of some sustainable project. Something that will go on without them. It creates a feeling of stability. I believe that the need for that kind of stability is as basic and as desperate as some of the other, more obvious needs. But there’s more than one way to get it. We may not think much of the sline subculture, but you have to admit it’s stable! Then the burgers have a completely different kind of stability. Orolo in dialog with Erasmus, 205

    I also love the formalized system of dialog, where it’s an objective of the theors to regularly argue with each other. If only people would actually do that! I’m generally a fan of arguing, and tend to do it just as often as I don’t. If only everyone else did as well…

    I no longer respected that oath. Or at least, I no longer trusted those who were charged with enforcing the Discipline to which I had sworn. But I couldn’t very well say as much to these friends of mine who did still respect it. 231

    Why do I hate politics? Why does going to church make me feel catatonic? It’s not that I hate democracy or that I think that believing in god in some unforgivably–backward and primitive notion; it’s more that both systems have steadily devolved in their lifetimes, leaving them (and their devotees) at the point where they garner at least as much of my disdain as they do my respect.

    …the Convox was political, and made decisions by compromise. And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all. 573

    I like the notion of introspectionist. 697

    Stephenson posits the idea that google should ensconce itself as useful to the web by generating endless amounts of crap in different places on the internet, thereby requiring people to use it to actually find anything worthwhile:

    Some of those businesses came up with a clever plan to make more money: they poisoned the well. They began to put crap on the Reticulum deliberately, forcing people to use their products to filter that crap back out. They created syndevs whose sole purpose was to spew crap into The Reticulum. But it had to be good crap. Samman, 795

    (Maybe google already came up with this, and that’s why they bought out blogger.)

    Mystic vs. Poetic (Laterran):

    The mystic nails a symbol to one meaning that was true for a moment but soon becomes false. The poet, on the other hand, sees that truth while it’s true but understands that symbols are always in flux and that their meanings are fleeting.

    “Anyway, my point is that guys like Flec have a weakness, almost a kind of addiction, for the mystical, as opposed to poetic, way of using their minds. And there’s an optimistic side of me that says such a person could break that addiction, be retrained to think like a poet, and accept the fluxational nature of symbols and meaning.”
    “Okay, but what’s the pessimistic side telling you?”
    “That the poet’s way is a feature of the brain, a specific organ or faculty that you either have or you don’t. And that those who have it are doomed to be at war forever with those who don’t.” Erasmus and Quin, 883-4

    And in the second-to-last paragraph of the book, Stephenson nails exactly and precisely they way I’ve tried to see the world for a few years now:

    Orolo said that the more he knew of the complexity of the mind, and the cosmos with which it was inextricably and mysteriously bound up, the more inclined he was to see it as a kind of miracle—not in quite the same sense that our Deolaters use the term, for he considered it altogether natural. He meant rather that the evolution of our minds from bits of inanimate matter was more beautiful and extraordinary than any of the miracles cataloged down through the ages by the religions of our world. And so he had an instinctive skepticism of any system of thought, religious or theorical, that pretended to encompass that miracle, and in so doing sought to draw limits around it. Erasmus, 889-90

  2. 02 June 2007

    The Mezzanine

    Nicholson Baker

    551 days ago

    A day in the life of a young man working in a nameless corporate office, full of wonderful minutiae and digression. Not even a day actually, more like a lunch hour.

  3. 30 January 2007

    The System of the World

    Neal Stephenson

    674 days ago

    Stephenson wraps up his Baroque Cycle in high style. Read it.

    And man do I wish Stephenson would’ve told what happened to precipitate Jack’s crowd-surfing episode.

  4. 16 January 2007

    Zodiac

    Neal Stephenson

    688 days ago

    Stephenson has his go at Captain Planet; kicks all kinds of ass.

    I had to ride slow because I was taking my guerilla route, the one I follow when I assume that everyonein a car is out to get me. My nighttime attitude is, anyone can run you down and get away with it. Why give some drunk the chance to plaster me against a car? That’s why I don’t even own a bike light, or one of those godawful reflective suits. Because if you’ve put yourself into a situation where someone has to see you in order to be safe – to see you, and give a fuck – you’ve already blown it. 45

    The big lie of American capitalism is that corporations work in their own best interests. In fact they’re constantly doing things that will eventually bring them to their knees. Most of these blunders involve toxic chemicals that any competent chemist should know to be dangerous. They pump these things into the environment and don’t even try to protect themselves. The evidence is right there in public, almost as if they’d printed up signed confessions and sprinkled them out of airplanes. Sooner or later, someone shows up in a Zodiac and points to that evidence, and the result is devastation far worse than what a terrorist, a Boone, could manage with bombs and guns. 57

    I knew this, but never fully realized what it meant:

    “Look, I’m no expert here,” Boone said, “but every environmentalist knows that a lot of water doesn’t have any air dissolved in it. Right? Polluted water, anything that’s got undecayed garbage or shit in it, doesn’t have air.”

    “Right,” Kelvin said, “because the organisms that break those things down use up all the air in the process. The more sewage there is in the water – that is the higher the Biochemical Oxygen Demand – the less oxygen is present. 250

  5. 14 January 2007

    The Big U

    Neal Stephenson

    690 days ago

    Reading this book makes me want to learn both to play the organ and write machine code (As far as Stephenson is concerned, I remember somewhere in the beginning of Cryptonomicon a discussion of how the two are, in fact, identical). As good as I’d expect a Stephenson novel to be.

  6. 28 December 2006

    The Confusion

    Neal Stephenson

    707 days ago

    Volume 2, books 4 and 5 of Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, good as always. If I couldn’t claim Stephenson as my favorite author before reading it, I don’t have much choice after.

  7. 24 December 2006

    Odalisque

    711 days ago

    Stephenson continues with his epic, 3rd book of 8. Reccommended.

  8. 14 December 2006

    King of the Vagabonds

    Neal Stephenson

    721 days ago

    Another Stephenson, supremely good stuff. The book ends in a real rut, can’t wait to get at the next one.

  9. 04 November 2006

    Quicksilver

    Neal Stephenson

    761 days ago

    There isn’t really much that I can say. Here’s some previous stuff on Stephenson, who’s hands down my favorite fiction writer.

    I’m pissed that the last 35 pages of Quicksilver are the first chapter from the next in the series. The ending just ran up behind me and bashed me over the head. Not that it was stunning (a fault lots of people find with Stephenson’s books), but there was still a good chunk of pages between my right thumb and forefinger that threw me.

    The second I got done with it I hopped onto amazon to order the next two. It’s been awhile since I’ve really read at a good pace, much less stuff as good as Stephenson. They pull you through just like pulp/trash novels do, but after reading a Dan Brown or a John Grisham you feel almost guilty because reading the book doesn’t really get you anything. I’ve read a few, and they all just blur together. (If you want, you can switch the pronoun you for me in the rest of this…)

    Stephenson won’t just blow you away for the few days it takes to get through the book (I read 80 pages thursday, ~250 yesterday, and 100 today), but you can actually tell one of his novels from another. Which is a plus. I take it as a sign that they didn’t just rot my brain.

    If I had to describe Quicksilver (I can’t), I’d say it was history/science/fiction. All three about balanced. Its going on in mid 17th century england, featuring scientists at the genesis of the Royal Society in London. Daniel Waterhouse makes friends with Netwon, Liebnitz, and plenty of other bigwigs; not to mention sails through a flotilla of pirates in the second, temporally distant plot line. I’m not describing any more than that, you should read it.

  10. 02 November 2006

    The Wild Boys

    William S. Burroughs

    763 days ago

    Quirky novel by William S. Burroughs. Good in some chapters, a bit lewd in most. There could have been more wild imaginative absurd scenes, and a lot fewer adolescent boy sex scenes. But I feel bad putting a book down without finishing it, and this one wasn’t sick enough to make me quit.

  11. 03 November 2005

    The Diamond Age

    Neal Stephenson

    1127 days ago

    Another excellent Neal Stephenson. Something about his novels just grabs me. I don’t know if it’s his severe techiness or his concurrent storylines or what, but after finishing the three I’ve read so far I’ve just been floored at how they ended up.

    The book goes on about subverting the accepted culture. It takes place in a moderately future world, where enclaves have taken the place of countries, set by phyles (phylums?) organized by cultural/religous affiliation.

    New Atlantis, up with the chinese and japanese phyles in terms of wealth and power, is host to a very proper society inspired by Victorian ideals. Very proper, Atlantans are embarrassingly chivalrous, and the Confucian, familial piety ideals dominate the two asian powerhouse societies.

    Lord Finkle-McGraw, a very high ranking international (interphyllial) official, wants his granddaughter, Elizabeth, to be influenced by something other then her Atlantan peers and society. He commissions a project, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, which tells an interactive story with the point being to teach more then could ever be learned in school. To subvert the culture, and provide Elizabeth with what Finkle-McGraw was disappointed to have failed to pass on to his children.

    What’s missing from traditional culture in Stephenson’s fantasy world is subtlety, the ability for children to handle ambiguity. They have their beliefs, and for the most part they life their life with those indoctrinated feelings sincerely without much thought.

    But those who rebel and cast out their beliefs are little better then those who live a small minded existence with their culturally indoctrinated morals. Contradiction and ambiguity. Finkle-McGraw himself sees the obtuse insanity of his own culture only to enforce it and hope he can reveal it to a select few through his primer.

    I couldn’t make much of an argument against the book, I loved it. I read through it quick, and couldn’t believe it finished when it did. I like how Stephenson cuts his novels short before any sort of conclusion is reached, I don’t know if he’s leaving room for secondary books or just wants to leave room for the imagination to come into play. Both I hope.

    I think what makes Stephenson’s writing so engaging is that it’s just swimming in ideas. All of his books jump off with a technological idea – it was VR in Snow Crash and Cryptography in Cryptonomicon, nanotech here. They proceed to move along fairly quickly with good depth, with two or three concurrent plot lines.

    My notes on Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, the two other Stephenson books I’ve read. I don’t know whether to continue with Zodiac or the Baroque Cycle, but the college library unfortunately doesn’t have either.

  12. 31 October 2005

    1131 days ago

    Teach a man to replicate

    Cory Doctorow’s newest is being serialized with Salon, and it’s really an excellent read.

    via Kjell Olsen1131 days ago

  13. 27 August 2005

    Cryptonomicon

    Neal Stephenson

    1196 days ago

    I’m really starting to love Neal Stephenson. Cryptonomicon is definitely as good as Snow Crash, which I loved also. It’s the longest book I’ve read in awhile, at 900 some pages, but I also read it faster then anything else – I started it monday night and was done by thursday morning.

  14. Also somewhat recently

      |