The latest Neal Stephenson book arrived yesterday, and I'm a chapter and a half into it. I'm hoping to read a lot of it on the trip to Sebastopol next week for the editors meeting--I'm so busy with editing right now that I don't have time to read much more than a few pages at night before bed.
It's huge. Enormous. Big and fat. The writing is very detailed, almost an obsessive compulsive narrative of description where setting a scene for a conversation involves a paragraph showing gaunt trees, crumbling chimneys, fighting birds, carriage ruts in the mud, and so on. This makes it very evocative of the period, but slower-moving than Cryptonomicon, which I greatly enjoyed. Not so slow-moving that I'm not enjoying it, just slow-moving enough that it's a more languid read so far than Cryptonomicon.
--Nat
I'm wading through Paul Graham's ANSI Common Lisp before I nod off. It's good bedtime reading -- after about 5 pages, I can't fight off the urge to sleep anymore.
