[quote]SteelyD wrote:
Otep wrote:
Neil Gaiman is incredible. Everything he touches, I find myself liking. And not just because of the pictures.
Funny-- I wasn’t even thinking of his graphic novels, but his full length (ie ‘regular’) novels.
There are some good books being suggested here.
Irish-- How did you like “American Lion”? That’s in my queue.
tGunslinger - How does “Anathem” compare to Cryptonomicon?
Additionally for anyone with ‘young readers’ in the house, I’ve read the full “The Warriors” series and “The Sisters Grimm” series to my kids (all < 8 years old). They are great stories. I read some to the kids, they read some to me. I usually ‘proof’ them on plane flights for work then hand them off when I get back.[/quote]
Stephenson still has the math, numbers, and science stuff in Anathem, but the perspective is first-person, and the story unfolds in a linear fashion. It doesn’t jump around to different eras, places, and characters the way Crypto did.
Also, the cast in Anathem is smaller than Crypto, yet the length is the same. So you really get to know the characters very well, especially Fraa Erasmus, the narrator.
Anathem isn’t an historical based novel either, it takes place in what could be called a “speculative”, future Earth-like world. As such, Stephenson uses a vocabulary similar to real English, but with his own twist. He also uses lots of inferences and very little direct explanation of the background history of the world. Difficult to explain in words, but you’ll see what I mean after a page or two.
For readers less inclined to try to a figure it out for themselves, Anathem includes a time-line, and a dictionary at the front of the book. I purposefully avoided using them when I read it, and I can vouch that you’ll eventually figure out what’s going on.
Finally, the narrator is a young monk who has spent his entire life in a secluded convent, and Stephenson often employs the naivete of Erasmus to subtly encourage the reader to try and guess at the mystery themselves.
On the whole, Anathem is a very good book, but I would put it one notch below Cryptonomicon. That is largely because I loved Crypto all the way to the end, while I didn’t love the conclusion to Anathem. By no means does the end ruin the entire book, IMO. Anathem was still one of the better books I’ve read in the last few months.
I also have to agree with other posters that Neil Gaiman’s work is great!
American Gods, Neverwhere, and Anansi Boys were all excellent!
