The Diamond Age
I just finished Neal Stephenson’s “The Diamond Age : Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer” — not only my favorite Neal Stephenson novel so far, but clearly one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.
Highly recommended.
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uuh - quite strong opposition. I tried THAT one a few month ago, due to some enthusiastic recommendations - and was really disappointed. A tightly interwoven net of “pieces”, sometimes obscure language - that one is clearly for Stephenson-lovers or insiders.
Maybe it’s inevitable that you feel this way about the first Neal Stephenson novel you read - I had some doubts with my first one (Cryptonomicon). You get used to it, though (I’ve read all of them by now) - Stephenson does not write end-to-end stories, but rather collections of ideas and patterns. But those are without competition …
in my opinion this was one of stephenson’s weaker offerings. still decent, but i found the didactic elements of the book annoying…i really didn’t need to have undergrad compsci weaved so tightly into my plot points. the only other stephenson book i can recommend beyond snow crash is cryptonomicron. stay away from his latest door-stop baroque series, i found those terribly boring.
Whoa! Another violent disagreement — I enjoyed the Baroque Cycle tremendously :-)