Anathem

Wow that was a long read. It was complicated by my return to the working world, but still I've rarely felt the uphill struggle of the protagonist mirrored with my own reading like that.

I liked a lot of this book. I adored the idea of “Narratives” and our subconscious desire to belong to one. I loved the “math” and the challenges living within and outside of one. I loved the Geometers and the ambiguity surrounding exactly who they are, the subtle nods and misspellings to earth culture. I loved representing the foundations of physics and mathematics in subtly different but parallel means. All of these made this book a fascinating read.

Personally, as someone with very little math/science background, I struggled a bit through the various expostulations of thought and technical details, but I was impressed at how Stephenson keeps the Story going through these technical parts. It seemed like you could just yank an entire philosophy textbook out of the book and still have a coherent story.

The ending did leave a lot to be desired for me , and I had trouble with finishing on a wedding. For such an epic piece to end on something so cliche brought me down. Ala and Raz's love story is so secondary to the real plot, that it felt a bit of a downer. I also am still working to understand the idea of alternate Narratives, how Jad could be alive and dead at the same time, how Raz could live all these concurrent lifetimes. Maybe if I'd seen more of that leading up to the ending, I'd have felt less brain-snapped by the whole thing.