Done with Cryptonomicon

Well, I finally finished Cryptonomicon and it was a roller coaster ride of an ending. I'm glad I perservered past the difficult first few hundred pages, because it was a story worth reading. Some interesting concepts that I hadn't thought of, too, such as a private, independent currency used solely for electronic transactions over the Internet. Also, the concept of a physical vault for sensitve electronic files located in an accomodating country with obliging laws regarding privacy. Very interesting.

So, Cryptonomicon is done and I decide to take it easy and read something light, Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella. And I ended up getting really ticked off at this whole "chick-lit" genre that has cropped up over the last decade. I'm referring to the Bridget Jones books, The Nanny Diaries, The Devil Wears Prada and the list just keeps growing. These books are really just name-dropping exercises in fluff. They are long on designer names and conversation but very light on anything of substance, character or plot.

I'd stop reading them except that I feel like I'm missing out if I haven't read the latest one. Which is why I'm really mad! I've been suckered into reading these books, but I don't feel like I've gained anything in return. And for comparison's sake, I read Confessions of a Shopaholic in about a day and a half, not any concentrated reading time, just on the elliptical, while cooking, and before bed. Cryptonomicon, on the other hand, took me WEEKS! So with Confessions, I wasn't even entertained for very long. Thank goodness I bought it at a garage sale.

I'm going to swear off chick-lit, and find a good book to read.

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.