Tombstone

EOS books has a post that the paperback of Anathem available weighing in at 1008 pages.  That my friends is a lot of book.

ph5il Anathem, Books

FlyingSinger has a brief review of Anathem over here at his blog.  But what caught my attention is that he read it on an iPhone with the Kindle SW?!?  I mean WOW that is tenacity, I mean the finger-swipes alone have me thinking that the poor guy will need some kind of joint replacement!  But anyway I guess it beats lugging an almost 900 page book around for a couple weeks…

ph5il Anathem, Books

Ran across this post on Interaction by Andy, and guess who is on the list for Best Novel, OK I’ll tell you Neal Stephenson.  He is in pretty good company but I am also slightly biased too.

ph5il Anathem, Books

Just in time for the Holidays there is a new contest over at EOS Books Blog where you can win a SIGNED copy of Anathem, Anathem CD and t-shirt, plus a special advance reader copy of The Confusion.  Hurry.

ph5il Anathem, Books, The Confusion

Here is an interview with Mr. Stephenson about Anathem.

ph5il Anathem, Books, Interviews

Here in an interview with the Telegraph UK, Mr. Stephenson discusses the finer points of Edwardian Martial Arts systems that use bicycles, also they do discuss Anathem too.

ph5il Anathem, Books, Interviews

io9.com,  here they vote for Orolo, lava and all that.  But I have to agree with the comments what about Fraa Jad!  Seriously that guy died like a thousand times over and altered space and time (or the narrative that our heroes found themselves in at the end of the story…CDS aside the dude died at least once give him that even if he does manage to keep his conscience alive in an alternate narrative) to save the day how is that not the winner!  How could you vote any other way?

ph5il Anathem, Books

Here is one more Q&A with Mr. Stephenson from Westword.

ph5il Anathem, Books, Interviews

Locus On-line

Erika of Redshirt Knitting

Bookhling on Propagation of Learning

ph5il Anathem, Books, Reviews

Well so Friday night after a week of reading I finished Anathem.  I felt like I needed a little time to digest and really think about what it was that made this book, for me, so hard to put down.  The answer I came up with was technical content, and the fact that the story was so compelling.  Neal Stephenson is really putting the Science in Science Fiction.

Normally I have to say that technical aspects can bog down a story but I can safely say that Mr. Stephenson has a much talked about talent of taking a very complex topic and has the ability to explain it in terms and vocabulary that are quickly grasped.  That skill has served him well in this story, as he built on these various ideas and theory until reaching his final goal, it was very satisfying to follow this progression.  There is already a large part of this book that appeals to me on a geeky personal level.  Now the story was also very good and complete. But the ending and more correctly the falling action was great.  And in the effort to not spoil anything WOW, very satisfying, in that you do get to see that most of your questions are answered.  It makes all the theory in the beginning very worthwhile.

Overall for an 890-page book, it really does not feel like a ton of reading the groundwork laid in the first few parts was interesting in a very Stephenson way.  And once the action starts it is really hard to stop as you are continually asking where the next turn is. I found that even with the large amounts of philosophy, physics and mathematics it felt to me to have a much easier read than the Baroque Cycle (that one was tough for me I have to admit).

ph5il Anathem, Books, Reviews