Bibliography
Jan. 20th, 2013 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyNew year, new list! I made 49 books last year - not the 52 I aim for, but not bad given that there was a whole wedding in there to organise.
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Yes, I enjoyed the Baroque Cycle enough to come back for more. This is a similar-ish sort of book, set in the same parallel universe as the Cycle (that is, one that looks very, very similar to ours but has a couple of oddities, like the archipelago of Qwghlm off the Scottish coast), but this one jumps between the latter period of the second world war and the modern period. The book is focused around cryptography and the hiding of secrets; in the second world war period, it's all Enigma machines and cracking codes and transmitting information secretly, while in the modern period it's all encrypting information and creating a free information state and computer security and hacking and wossname.
The other subtheme that runs through the book is money and value, which are not always the same thing. Part of the world war two plot focuses on secret Nazi gold and the liberation of the same; part of it looks at buried Nipponese gold and how little this is actually worth. The modern period, of course, has information as money, but there's also quite an interesting sequence in which an inheritence is divided up according to how much financial and sentimental value each family member gives each item. Plus there's plenty about banks and finances and government budgeting and so on, all interwoven into the piece as a whole.
So, if you like that sort of thing, you'll probably like this. The narration is chopped up into chunks that jump between narrators as well as time periods. There's little in terms of female speaking, sadly, although there are plenty of female characters (they tend to be love interests or wives, but sadly c'est la vie for this genre, I suspect). The writing is pretty good and just misses getting over-technical. The balance between the WWII and the modern material means that neither period gets too tired - which I think it quickly would if the novel focused on one or the other. So, yes. Worth going for.
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Yes, I enjoyed the Baroque Cycle enough to come back for more. This is a similar-ish sort of book, set in the same parallel universe as the Cycle (that is, one that looks very, very similar to ours but has a couple of oddities, like the archipelago of Qwghlm off the Scottish coast), but this one jumps between the latter period of the second world war and the modern period. The book is focused around cryptography and the hiding of secrets; in the second world war period, it's all Enigma machines and cracking codes and transmitting information secretly, while in the modern period it's all encrypting information and creating a free information state and computer security and hacking and wossname.
The other subtheme that runs through the book is money and value, which are not always the same thing. Part of the world war two plot focuses on secret Nazi gold and the liberation of the same; part of it looks at buried Nipponese gold and how little this is actually worth. The modern period, of course, has information as money, but there's also quite an interesting sequence in which an inheritence is divided up according to how much financial and sentimental value each family member gives each item. Plus there's plenty about banks and finances and government budgeting and so on, all interwoven into the piece as a whole.
So, if you like that sort of thing, you'll probably like this. The narration is chopped up into chunks that jump between narrators as well as time periods. There's little in terms of female speaking, sadly, although there are plenty of female characters (they tend to be love interests or wives, but sadly c'est la vie for this genre, I suspect). The writing is pretty good and just misses getting over-technical. The balance between the WWII and the modern material means that neither period gets too tired - which I think it quickly would if the novel focused on one or the other. So, yes. Worth going for.
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Date: 2013-01-20 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-21 08:20 pm (UTC)