I finished Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon at 2:30 this morning after reading for 5 1/2 hours. Great book, and for him a remarkably unannoying ending. The ending to The Diamond Age bugged me a lot (though I liked the rest of the book enough that I've read it twice regardless).

I've seen reviews that compared Cryptonomicon to The Illuminatus! Trilogy and to Gravity's Rainbow but don't think it's a very close comparison. For one thing, C. wasn't a hard read. It took me a couple hundred pages (out of 900+) to get into it, and I suppose some people would find the math/cryptography theory/computer code to be comfusing, but the overall plot was revealed in a clear fashion. (It's a book that I"ll probably reread but not one that I'll NEED to reread to understand, unlike GR (read once) and I! (read 4 times I think)).
posted by kristin at 2:14 PM

I finished Dennis Cooper's The Dream Police this evening. It's a book of poetry most of which will shock you if you're bothered by images of gay sex, fisting, prostitution (boy), etc.
posted by kristin at 2:13 PM

I finished Going Home Again tonight. Overall I liked it, but there were large sections that I just didn't understand. "Scientification" for example. What in the world is a Sparky? Anyhow.. The most striking stories to me were the alternate history ones. I hadn't heard of Howard Waldrop before until I won a copy of this book as well as Night of the Cooters from an online contest on Event Horizon. Time to scour Powells and other bookstores looking for copies of his earlier (all apparently out of print) books
posted by kristin at 2:05 PM