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Loading... Anathemby Neal Stephenson
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Just picked this up from the library. It's 900 pages. Anyone want to start placing bets on how high my overdue fines will get?Three weeks later: Kicking this back to my to-read shelf. I never got past the prologue, not because of any fault of the book, but because I've been watching Battlestar Galactica on DVD, and there's only room for one genre universe in my head at a time.  catalogthis | Nov 24, 2009 |  Another fantastic, intelectually challenging bit of work from Neal Stephenson! At times extrmemely challenging, but definitely worth it in the end. (  ) trinibaby9 | Nov 24, 2009 | This book was fantastic. All the erudition you would expect from Neal Stephenson, plus a cracking yarn that I literally couldn't tear myself away from. Read it, read the glossary, the timeline, the calcas at the back - just dig in and enjoy. An awesome read. (  ) Silver | Nov 22, 2009 | I want to like this book more than I did. Stephenson is a fountain of great ideas, but he's been in need of fierce editing ever since he "went big" with the Baroque Cycle. I'm not one to complain about lengthy didactic passages in fiction; Heinlein did them just fine in his sci-fi, and Eco (to whose "Name of the Rose" this book owes a lot) writes them much better than he writes "real" dialogue. Anathem has major pacing problems, though, which is a shame, because Stephenson hasn't been this witty and inventive in years. (  ) schlimmbesserung | Nov 18, 2009 | Anathem is an interesting book, a ponderous book, a boring book and also a great book. All these things at different times that it becomes difficult to place the book with one review and one rating. To be sure, Stephenson does something with Anathem that most authors either cannot do or cannot get away with doing. He rambles and extends chapters continually. While he does this however, it can often be to great benefit to a reader wishing to come across a different way of looking at whatever theme Stephenson is trying to mention. At odd times the rambling can come across as pointless and arbitrary - likely Stephenson saw a point to it but it was lost in translation along the way. Unlike most reviewers I have noticed, I enjoyed the first one-third of Anathem the most. It was intelligent, slow-paced and basically developed what the reader was immersed with. To me, it was amazing. The mid-section of the novel was also good but took quite a different style than the first sections. It was faster paced with more going on and with some eventual "action" sequences that were almost non-existant in the first third. The last third of the book was a letdown to me. The novel became even more fast-paced with yet again more changes to the novel's style and I felt Stephenson was trying to rush a conclusion a bit. Overall, I can definitely understand how many readers would not enjoy this book. It's a book for people who want a slower paced, more thought-based novel with an imaginative setting and lots of various themes being touched. At times incredibly slow, it was still overall a decent novel, I only wish that the artful quality that the book began with could have continued through the later chapters. ( )1  briandarvell | Nov 8, 2009 | 
 The only catch to reading a novel as imposingly magnificent as this is that for the next few months, everything else seems small and obvious by comparison. Stephenson's world-building skills, honed by the exacting work he did on his recent Baroque Cycle trilogy, are at their best here. Anathem is that rarest of things: A stately novel of ideas packed with cool tech, terrific fight scenes, aliens, and even a little ESP.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0061474096, Hardcover)Anathem, the latest invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, is a magnificent creation: a work of great scope, intelligence, and imagination that ushers readers into a recognizable—yet strangely inverted—world. Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside "saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outside—the Extramuros—for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago. Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent's gates—at the same time opening them wide to welcome the curious "extras" in. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn't seen since he was "collected." But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change. Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros—a threat that only an unsteady alliance of saecular and avout can oppose—as, one by one, Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Suddenly burdened with a staggering responsibility, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world—as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:18 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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