Anathem

This was a daunting read, but proved to be an absolute blast. I started and got stuck pretty early, but on coming back I was able to pick up the vocabulary and names a lot more easily and blasted through the rest in a few days. To be sure, this seems to happen for me a with a lot of books, so it's hard to say if this is Anathem-specific, but the ride that Stephenson takes you on is absolutely worth it.

I tried describing this book to people and struggled to get it into words, so here's my best shot. Anathem takes place on a planet similar to Earth in a lot of ways, but most notably there are orders of monastic scholars called avout that segregate themselves off from the rest of the world. We spend a good chunk of the book just figuring out how this life works and dealing with relatively petty drama, and then the plot kicks into high gear.

The first thing that distinguishes Anathem for me is the reworking of vocabulary for many common things. While obviously presenting some barrier to entry, I found this impressive because not only did the words seem like they could easily have existed in English, they reflected something interesting about how we privilege the words we happen to use. For example, “theorics” is a catch-all term that distinguishes academic/theoretical study from “praxic” or practical/actionable affairs. I found this to uniquely emphasise the thought-action distinction as central to scholarship, as opposed to the more discipline-based division we tend to talk about with phrases such as physics vs applied physics.

The other big difference is that Anathem is a book that follows nerdy scholars, and so if you happen to like literally having characters describe thought experiments to each other this book will definitely appeal. In particular, the book discusses a great deal topics on the philosophy of consciousness and thought. I have no idea what the analogues or bases are for these discussions in real philosophy, but the effect (combined with the vocabulary thing) is to make you strongly question the foundations of why you think the things you think, or what you consider to be true and real. As the book develops, this quickly becomes a feature of not just the style but the plot, but I won't spoil any more.

So we are left with a beautifully put together, rich world with good characters, infused with a heavy dose of philosophy and science. Anathem is a trip, truly, that will keep you thinking.

P.S. If I'd make one nitpick, it's that there didn't need to be a romantic subplot...