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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3141 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: April 23rd: What are you reading this week?

Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett. When I asked my mentor to make a recommendation of a well-paced thriller, that's what he gave me. It's technically excellent and enveloping. Truly a gripping read.

And if you find Stephenson to be brilliant you'll probably be done with Follett in a bathroom break. I gave up on Cryptonomicon about 12 hours into it 'cuz I just couldn't give a shit.





user-inactivated  ·  3141 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Cryptonomicon is a lot of fun if you know/are the sort of people he's writing about, but I'm constantly surprised it gets recommended outside of techy circles. It's like a big collection of in-jokes and history of cryptography and computing with a half-assed thriller plot to sort of tie it together.

kleinbl00  ·  3140 days ago  ·  link  ·  

And I have a more-than-passing familiarity with all of it, and it felt like name-checking to me. I didn't feel like Stephenson wanted me to know these people, I felt like Stephenson was playing Bingo with how many names he could get into it.