I'm reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson for the third time, and understanding it more than the second time. It has wonderful technical digressions that seem aimed precisely at geeks/hackers. In fact, on the the main characters is a programmer, and another is a code-breaker in the military who sees an opportunity for geeky analysis in everything he sees. (There are also many accounts of military battles from a soldier's point of view to break the talking up.)
I'm about halfway through this. Not sure I liked it at first, because his style seemed a bit too heavy-handed, as if he were a 16 year old with a really big thesaurus, trying to allude to as many different things as possible. It's grown on me though, over the last far-too-many pages. Still not totally happy, but it's interesting.
A third of the way in. While I find it definitely entertaining, and like both the military adventures and geeky bits, I do not—so far—feel actually engaged with it. However this could be because it's hard to read while in bed: tiny type and bulky (at 900+ pages).
Recently read "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins. The middle part was quite dense for me, but in the end I gained new appreciation for the AI field, which before really seemed like much pie in the sky nonsense, and after reading this book I am a believer.
Gearing up for something completely different now as the 12th installment of the WoT series is coming out in a few weeks.
I'm almost half way through it, I love most of the technical details he has described so far. Interesting on the whole, but I somehow lose interest and switch to another book for a couple of days before coming back to it.
I am also reading "Awaken the Giant within" by Anthony Robbins, the first third seemed to be pretty solid, though I am not sure the NAC stuff works as well as he says.
I recently read _Cryptonomicon_ after having put it down last year. It was fun, and overall it was definitely worth it. I'm reading his _Snow Crash_ now. It was published in 1992, before the Web, and it predicts a time close to present day. It's interesting to see what he got right, and what he got wrong. It's also a fun read if you are generous with the disbelief suspension.
