Creeping along with Cryptonomicon...

I am still reading Cryptonomicon. I have made it to over 200 pages, and I really should NOT have checked to see how many pages were actually in this thing. Over 900. This is very depressing considering the progress I have been making. And I have to emphasize that this is not a bad book. It is intense, it is interesting, and, ane Nick puts it, "very dense." I am usually quite a fast reader, and to creep along so slowly is rather frustrating.

So there has been no progress on the Trollope front as of yet. The Warden still sits patiently on my bedside table, waiting for me to get supremely frustrated with Cryptonomicon. Cryptonomicon is the ultra-intellectual's answer to Enigma by Robert Harris. Enigma was very good, very exciting, but ultimately light on the details of the cryptography. Cryptonomicon not only gives you the details on the cryptography, but the mathematics behind it, and its ramifications in our data-driven society.

I have started a new genre as well this week. I stopped by the library with my youngest son Sam - to find another Teletubbies video, I'm sorry to say. I decided to try a book on cd, since I absolutely cannot read Cryptonomicon on the elliptical trainer, it's just too difficult. I was hoping to find a "classic" on cd that I had not yet read, perhaps something by Dickens or Eliot, but Sam was running out of patience and I kind of had to grab something that looked promising. It's called The Keeper of the Keys by Perri O'Shaughnessy, and it is definitely something I would not have picked up in book form. On cd, it is entertaining - there are 2 actors reading it, one from the male perspective, and the other from the female character's perspective. This is an intriguing way of presenting the novel, and it keeps me entertained while exercising, which is all I am asking at this point.

Taking steps toward Trollope

I actually took The Warden out of its slipcase and put a book sock on it, and it is sitting on my bedside table. I have started to read the introduction, too. Wow. I didn't think it was going to happen, so maybe this blog is good for something.

I've been studying the map of Barsetshire, too. The US Trollope society has a good map online, here:

http://www.trollopeusa.org/tsociety/map.html

Still reading Cryptonomicon. I think I'll be reading it for quite a while.

Another non- Trollope book

I have started another novel - Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I read a stellar review of this book a few years ago, along with an interesting article on the author, and I decided to buy the book for my husband Nick. Nick read some of it, but got bogged down and did not finish it.

I started reading this a few days ago, and while it is very intensely interesting, I can see why Nick got bogged down. The novel, so far, switches between stories of several different people, and each storyline is so complicated that I have trouble moving from one character to another. Also, some of the subject matter is quite elevated and complex - mathematical equations and theories - and I feel like I need more information in the section to fully process the information.

Hopefully, I'll finish this, and it will be worthwhile.

I think I will take The Warden off the shelf, just to be on the safe side.