Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Cryptonomicon
Book Review: A behemoth and a wild ride
Summary: 4 Stars
I was excited to pick up this book because it was on a subject right up my alley - encryption. Throw in the fact that it has a lot of WWII action in there and I was sure it was a winner.
The book is a winner in many respects but I found myself wanting to read more about the WWII characters than the modern ones. The story jumps around a lot, back to WWII and to the modern age with the common thread of encryption saving the world (in WWII) and conquering the world, at least fiscally, in the modern day.
I thought the actions and theory behind the modern part of the story were a bit of a stretch. Yes, this is a work of fiction, but I like my fiction to be believable! Stephenson goes into a bit of economic theory to support how his modern concept could work (don't want to spoil anything), but I just didn't buy it.
Maybe that's where Stephenson went wrong for me. This is a huge book - well over 1000 pages, but the story winds and wanders all over the place going in detail into encryption theory, economic theory, theoretical math - great stuff for a geek like me but it was tough to stick to a story line when all this subjects had to be explained. Perhaps the author should have assumed his reader was a bit more intelligent and then he wouldn't have had to delve into all these explanations.
Still, I give the book 4 out of 5 stars. It was a pretty good book, pretty overwhelming too - but that can be a good thing.
Book Review: A big, gold, brick of a book
Summary: 5 Stars
I loved this book.
It seems like most reviewers who enjoy Cryptonomicon are involved heavily in some type of geeky activity, so this review is for the other people out there, people like me, who ask only "Does it work?", not, "How does it work?"
This book, with all of its in-depth explanations for questions I never thought to ask, was incredibly engaging. It has an enormous plotline that spans several decades, yet does eventually tie in together. There are lots of "Aha!" moments, as well as several where you ask "How did he DO that?"
I loved it so much that I bought it for my husband, a computer geek, and my dad, definitely not a computer geek, for their father's day gifts. It is looong, but unforgettable. The best way to read this book is in big stretches, so carve out some time, put your feet up, and get ready to lose yourself in a place where eating cereal has a mathematical precision that will amaze you.
And if you don't like it, you can always use it to prop open doors.
Book Review: A book of a higher order
Summary: 4 Stars
After reading through both the book and several of the reviews I have come to the conclusion that this book is only enjoyable under the following conditions:1) You're willing to think through a lot of the concepts: Some of the crypto/mathematics/mythology discussions can not be zipped through and fully understood. Like many other great books, this is not fast food to be consumed and thrown away, but rather a fine wine to be appreciated.
2) You must possess a significant amount of background knowledge: Math especially is troublesome on this point. Many negative reviews of this book are bascially premised on "If Stephenson wanted to write a math book, he should have just done it" To be honest, the math is not especially complicated. One simply needs to understand the way that functions operate and maybe a little bit of calculus understanding, although I don't know if it is entirely necessary.
3) You must be able to enjoy interesting digressions that have little to do with the plot: Personally I like the digressions by the two Waterhouse characters because it's the way that real people actually think: within their field of knowledge and in highly complex terms. It turns others off though as wasting pages. To be honest, I think the best parts of this book are the digressions (particularly Enoch Root's digressions on mythology and his relationship to the church).
In the end, this book is very good. The only thing that prevents it from getting the full 5 stars from me is that it really needed another 50 pages to properly end the plot, digressions or not. Stephenson's books are as much about the character's ideas as the actual character's themselves. So if you're interested in complex ideas, with some WWII and business mischief thrown in, this book is a winner.
Book Review: A book to appeal to all tastes
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a very hard book to describe - it is a bit Catch-22 meets Enigma meets the current raft of cyper-punk novels. But unlike so many books that try to be many things and fails, this book pulls it off, and superbly.A multi-threaded book that travels easily through time, it covers WWII, the pacific, cryptography, and modern developments in computing,managing to include engaging characters and a great plot. The ending does sag a little, but this may be because after 915 pages you are so wrapped up in the book you don't want it to ever end!
While much has been made of the author's cyber-punk credentials and the book's appeal to geeks, don't let this put you off if this is not your usual kind of thing (it definately isn't mine). Away from these comments, this book stands alone as being well written, very humourous, engaging to the point of un-put-downability, and you will probably learn something you didn't know before. Highly, highly recommended!
Book Review: A book worthy of praise
Summary: 5 Stars
Let me start by saying that this wasn't the book that I was expecting it to be. While that may be the case, it was indeed a very, very good book, and I think it probably turned out better than what I had expected. By the title alone, one could be lead to believe that the entire book centers around cryptography. This isn't quite the case, though it is a major part of the book. In truth, it's more of a tale about a small group of people during world war two, and the way the lives of their descendants later on cross paths with the history of their relatives. Each generation it's own cryptological problems, though, as well as groups of people attempting to stop them from their goals.
As such, it's not overly topheavy with cryptology-related facts that might bore most readers. This isn't to say there is none at all for those who are interested in such things. One part of the book revolves around a rather clever cryptosystem based around a pack of cards. Much to my delight, this system was described in detail in an appendix by none other than Bruce Schneier, a name that cryptography enthusiasts everywhere will no doubt recognize.
The tale unfolded at a good pace, though the page count might lead you to think otherwise. It was a very lengthy book, but that only gave me all that much more time to enjoy it. The length is reasonable when you consider that the book is really the stories of two different groups of people in two different times, each one having a story that was possibly worthy of a book by itself.
On the whole, I'd rank it among the best books I've ever read. After a glance at the other reviews on this page, I don't seem to be alone in that ruling.