The difference between a novel and a tome
At what point does a simple book get to be “too long”? We offer up War And Peace as the sort of thing one shouldn’t plan on reading tomorrow afternoon before supper (with good reason) and then promptly put it aside and choose something easier, like Readers Digest or the Sun (from any city). I’m part of the way through another one.
Neal Stephenson has written some very good fiction. He gets his jollies from encryption and history, and all of the books that I’ve read so far have left me satisfied. Right now, I’m a third of the way through a really big helping; as of last evening, I’ve completed the first nine hundred pages, (with another seventeen hundred to go) in the Baroque Cycle. I received the three bricks almost four years ago, but a lot of other books got in the queue, and well, that’s how it goes.
The main characters have been dead for over three centuries, so a few days one way or another won’t matter. Let’s see if I can bring you up to date. So far, I’ve discovered that Isaac Newton (the apple on the noggin guy from science class) was a freak. So were most of his friends. Think of nerds with access to dangerous chemistry sets. The whole of Europe seems to have been at war with itself (I told you there was nothing new going on) and the city of London had serious problems with sewage.
Someone actually found a use for the I Ching (yes, my professor, I still have the copy you loaned my roommate way back when; we still haven’t figured out why). Turns out that it can provide seeds for random number generation. Letters were being read by the postman even then, so putting a story [[within a story [within a story]]] seemed like one way to get the message through unshared. I’m starting to get insight into mathematics, because two of the characters were busily postulating the idea of calculus at the same time but not in the same room. Approaching the limits of believability, that one.
I’m in an alternate world. Instead of orcs, there are math majors. Instead of trolls, there are little men in Dutch coffee houses, selling and buying shares and futures and puts and all the other stuff that seems to fascinate a certain sector of the population (if the space wasted in newspapers and television are an indication). Even a pillow cover might hide a tale or two.
Yes, I recommend the books. In small doses, just before bedtime. Think of them as hot milk for the lactose intolerant. And Newtonian physics does have a “back story”.
