&ldquo;first there was a three-legged monkey...&rdquo; tag:andthennothing.net,2005:Typo Typo 2005-12-18T03:18:59+00:00 Jonas Bengtsson urn:uuid:d380ecb2-a4da-45ca-8e0d-db160cb492ff 2005-08-13T00:31:00+00:00 2005-12-18T03:18:59+00:00 Thanks for the recommendation. I think I will try to read some other books now for a while (I've started reading "The Hobbit") but I will almost certainly revisit Stephenson later on! Olle Jonsson urn:uuid:7ae24de3-613c-4a48-9e8f-5fd38cfa5497 2005-08-12T15:25:00+00:00 2005-12-18T03:18:59+00:00 I am in the middle of the middle book of Stephenson's 3-part "Baroque Cycle" (three concrete blocks of 700 pages each). Even more history, arcane references and so forth. <BR/><BR/>A treat to read.<BR/><BR/>(He is a real geek and a real storyteller to boot.) Jonas Bengtsson jonas.b@home.se urn:uuid:62e2309a-c0a4-45a6-b2fe-c74de93fa871 2005-08-11T20:34:00+00:00 2005-12-18T03:19:02+00:00 <p>I very rarely read books, which is a shame since I like doing it, but during the summer I always try to read at least one novel. This time I ended up reading the science fiction novel <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash">Snow Crash</a> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson">Neal Stephenson</a>. <a href="http://mariawe.blogspot.com/">Maria</a> recommended it one and a half years ago, I ordered it a few weeks ago and it took almost a week to read (with a few <a href="http://andthennothing.net/archives/2005/07/29/abruption">abruptions</a> and days off).</p> <p>Reviews of books and movies are not part of my skill set (and you can currently find <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0553380958">444 reviews over at Amazon</a>), but at least I can recommend it :-). It&#8217;s cyberpunk with a dystopian future where franchises rule the world. There are some nice action scenes with pizza delivery, skateboarding++, motorcycles, and sword fighting. Parts of the book happens inside what the internets have morphed into, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse">Metaverse</a>, a virutal reality world quite similar to <a href="http://secondlife.com/">Second Life</a> (which was brought to my attention by <a href="http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail369.html">some</a> <a href="http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail377.html">podcasts</a> on <a href="http://www.itconversations.com/">IT Conversations</a> and I have yet to try it out, but basically the users can program/create things, retain the <a href="http://secondlife.com/commerce/ip.php">ownership</a> and can <a href="http://www.slexchange.com/">sell</a> them). There is also quite a lot of history and religion thrown into the mix.</p> <p>I found some passages quite hard to read due to what Wikipedia describes as &#8220;many arcane references to geography, politics, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, history, and computer science&#8221;, and when I started reading after taking longer pauses it took a while to get going again &mdash; but I account that to my lack of experience reading English novels. Except for those problems, it was a really captivating, interesting, exciting and entertaining book.</p> <p>So go read it if you like books like it! :-)</p>