Took the Plunge

Began reading/listening to Neal Stephenson’s Anathem two nights ago. If you visit my blog regularly, you know I have a recent thing for reading a big book along with an audio CD. Did it for The Lord of the Rings, Atlas Shrugged, and The Killer Angels. I enjoy it because I can enjoy the book better: it slows me down, focuses me on the action, exposition and dialogue, and keeps out distractions.

My latest manufactured dilemma was what book to read/listen to next. Anathem? Master and Commander? Watership Down? The Robots of Dawn? The Grapes of Wrath? Great Expectations?

So I decided on this one, Anathem being the book with the longest life on my shelf.

However, I’ve been made aware of vague warnings about the book … overlong passages, pages, and chapters with no real connection to the plot … weak ending with little payoff … possible anti-faith stance. As a veteran of Cryptonomicon, I am aware of this, and that experience is probably what’s kept me from the book for the past three years (I got it as a Christmas present in 2010).

Since I have an open mind, I am taking the plunge anyway!

A few online reviewers told me that the book really doesn’t start rolling until page 200 or so. The first night of reading/listening, I put away 21 pages, and it was quite boring. Had trouble concentrating being thrown headlong into this brave new world. Which is fine, I do it every time I crack open a new SF book, but this was just plain dull. Dull and glacially-paced. Could I stick with it for nine more days, until that magic page 200?

Well, turns out I don’t have to. The next night’s reading picked up. Some interesting ideas were thrown in (ie, the question of whether two closed systems, such as parallel universes, could have synchronous time measurement/correspondence … foreshadowing?). I started to get some of the jargon down (there’s a hundred-term glossary at the back of the book). Sparring dialogue. A much better experience, twenty pages further in.

So … I think every 100 pages or so I’ll report in about the book (my version clocks in at 980 pages). What I like, what I dislike, what’s going on with plot, characters, etc. Might be a worthwhile exercise in itself, and gives me a regular topic to blog on.

Want to get to page one hundred by the end of the holiday weekend …