Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

[blackstone]

First of all, I'd like to thank you guys for recommending this to me. I can totally see why you did and it was quite up my alley.

I must say that for the first 200 pages or so I wasn't sure I was going to like it. I thought it was an interesting concept, but it was the characters that bothered me. Let's review:

Comments

[pretzelcoatl]

I mostly liked it because of the cyberpunk and the Babylonian mythos involved. That was pretty damn awesome. Plus, it was cool to have a mixed race main character/hero... and at the time, the pun on his name was pretty hilarious.

I might check out more of Stephenson's stuff, but Cryptonomicon (the one everyone RAVES about) kind of left me cold, so I'm taking it as a gamble if I do.

And which fantasy novel?

[blackstone]

I really think he did an amazing job with the mythos. I haven't looked into it further yet, but is me connected to the word/concept of meme? I like books that make me want to learn other things.

[doctoreon]

Do some research into neuro-linguistic programming, that's what Stephenson was on about. It's a whole freaky pseudo science full of bullshit. Fun stuff, though, if you're a hacker.

[blackstone]

I've heard of NLP, but haven't looked into it. Isn't it used by salespeople? Like, Dale Carnegie on steroids?

[doctoreon]

Yeah, something like that. The whole thing in Snowcrash was to take the concept and ramp it up a few million notches.

[blackstone]

And add blood and cocaine, which is a nice touch.

[doctoreon]

I hear Diamond Age is really good, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet. My girlfriend says his Baroque Cycle was pretty boring, at least Quicksilver.

[pretzelcoatl]

Yeah, Cryptonomicon was boring for me, so I can only imagine Baroque Cycle would be even worse. Which is a shame because I do love crazy alchemists.

[doctoreon]

For crazy Alchemists, you should read the Age of Unreason series. That's an awesome set of books - Newton and Franklin as alchemists, post-apocalyptic Europe in the 1700s. Great stuff.

[pretzelcoatl]

Ooooooooooooooo. Post-apocalyptic and featuring Newton? (I'm both fascinated by him and we're related. :D) Hello Wishlist!

[doctoreon]

Dude, if you want to know crazy stuff about Newton, I'm the guy to talk to. I know all sorts of crazy shit about him.

[blackstone]

Inkheart.

[pretzelcoatl]

Ohhhh the sfd_bookclub thing.

(Although you may not like YA fantasy, I do still have to recommend Garth Nix, though. :) )

[blackstone]

Yeah, and I just joined, so I had to restrain myself during the Wao vs Inkheart debate from saying WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME THAT YOU WANT TO READ A CHILDREN'S BOOK because I don't want to be that guy, you know? Or, rather, I don't want to present myself as that guy. Because they're all very nice people.

[pretzelcoatl]

Yeah, that whole thing sounded kind of ridiculous. I didn't join the book club for that reason; I imagine I'd feel a little butthurt if someone chose a book I didn't like the sound of. :P

[blackstone]

I'd actually prefer a less democratic structure. Maybe the mods take suggestions (which they did, shortly before I joined) and then announce what the books are going to be. But hey, it's no big deal; just an excuse to read a book I may not normally read and talk to some fun people about it.