Quicksilver

I am a big fan of Neal Stephenson.  I am well on my way to having read everything that he has ever written.  My most recent read in his bibliography is Quicksilver, which is the first book in his Baroque Cycle, a historical fiction series.  The Baroque Cycle is a trilogy in eight parts (to paraphrase the Hitchhiker's Guide series) and as a whole spans from the 1660's to the 1710's, chock full of enlightenment era goodness.  Quicksilver contains the first three books of the eight: Quicksilver, The King of the Vagabonds, and Odalisque.  Of these three, I would say that the middle one is clearly the best.  It pains me to say so because I do enjoy mathematics and physics and much of the first and third books deal with a young Issac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz they did drag somewhat.  In contrast with that, most of the second book is told from the third person limited point of view of a vagabond.  The story flows better and is more entertaining for sure.

Like all Stephenson books, this has tidbits of humor sprinkled throughout, really lightening the mood and causing occasional chuckles (there is one part in The King of the Vagabonds involving cuckoo clocks that made me laugh riotously).  In addition, the characters are well formed and the setting is incredibly well executed.  The author uses some enlightenment era jargon ("phant'sy" instead of fantasy for example) and takes every opportunity to explain the origin of words and ideas.  While this novel does play a little fast and loose with the exact players, the historical events portrayed mostly accurate and shape the development of the characters.  Someone who doesn't know much about 17th century European history can still find the story engaging (and perhaps educational too) and those who do know about it will still be left guessing about how the events will shape and affect the characters in the story.

Overall, while the first part was lackluster (compared to Stephenson's other works at least) it was good enough to encourage me to persevere on to the second and that was a good story that was continued into the third.  I am currently reading the second book in the trilogy and do not yet regret my decision to give up on Quicksilver.  It is a large book but an enjoyable one.

While I would not normally divide a book into sections like this, the disparity between the first part and the rest of the book is significant.  I would give the first part a 65%, the second part an 85%, and the third part an 80%.

If you have not read anything by Neal Stephenson, I highly recommend Snow Crash and Anathem.  They are both exceedingly good books.

Snow Crash was written in the early 1990's and predicted many aspects of the internet fairly accurately.  Despite being written so long ago, the book holds up pretty well as a futuristic story.  The book is a fun read, being smart and humorous (the main character is named Hiro Protagonist), and I would recommend it regardless of your technological savvy.

Anathem was, without a doubt, the best book I read last year.  It is a really strange blending of the fantasy and science fiction genres but it is great.  About three quarters of the way through the book I looked back on the journey that brought me from the beginning to that point and was amazed.  I really cannot say enough good things about this book.  The one problem some readers might have is that the book has its own slang and titles (sort of like Clockwork Orange) and it takes 100 pages or so to get used to that.  That would be a bigger issue in a shorter book but Anathem clocks in at just over 900 pages, making it just a minor bump in the beginning.

Sherlock Holmes

The characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson have endured in the public mind for over a century, most recently appearing in a feature film and a BBC television show. Over the past year or so, I have been working my way through all of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. This comprises a total of 4 novellas and 5 short story collections. I have to say, while they are sometimes slightly repetitive and predictable if you take them all in at once, they are enjoyable reads. The short stories make excellent little things to read before you go to sleep or while you are waiting for the bus. The first two novellas, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four (which has a boat chase!) could be considered complete books, one a sequel for the other but the second two novels, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear, are basically just longer versions of the short stories.

Instead of detailing my thoughts about all of the stories and novellas, I am just going to discuss my favorite in each of the categories in this post.  Perhaps I will come back to others at a later date.

My favorite of the novellas was The Study in Scarlet. This was the first story published and the characters of Holmes and Watson get some fleshing out that they do not get very much of in the later stories. However, what really made this novel shine for me was, unlike most of the other Sherlock Holmes stories, which are generally narrated by Watson in the first person, this one has an entire section on the criminal's background in the third person. This section could make a compelling, if short, western by itself and was a surprising bonus.

My favorite of the short stories was The Adventure of the Illustrious Client. This came from The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, which is widely declared to be the worst of the short story collections; however, I did not find it bad at all. In the Adventure of the Illustrious Client, like in so many other Sherlock Holmes stories, Watson is used as a distraction while Holmes does something else. Unlike those other stories, in this one Watson knows he is a distraction and has time to prepare for the role. Also, unlike many other Sherlock Holmes stories, in this one Holmes is not out to solve a mystery but to influence an opinion.

Overall, while there are some repetitive themes in the stories (Watson being a distraction, people believed dead being still alive, among others) each story brings something unique to the table and I am glad that I read them all, rather than just a selection of them.

While some of  the stories are good and others are bad (which is completely understandable considering the sheer volume of stories Doyle wrote) I would give the overall series an 80% with certain stories being all the way up to a 95% and some down to 70%.

Introduction

I love to read.  Both of my parents read to me from an extremely early age and I have a true passion for books and stories.  In my fifth-of-a-century of life so far, I have managed to amass quite the sizable quantity of books and I wanted to share my thoughts of the ones that I read.  If even one person finds a book that they like from this blog, then it will have served its purpose.