Cryptonomicon

I once read a memoir by some guy who was on the outer fringes of the beat movement. He worked in a book shop, and perhaps inevitably he had some problems with alcohol. He wrote he was an optimistic person, because he started reading "War and Peace" in his middle 20s, but he finished it in his 30s.

I sort of feel the same thing about the book Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I am pretty sure I started reading this when I was living in Liverpool over 3 years ago. I finished it this afternoon. I has forgotten some of the characters, during my long period of not reading it. I think I stopped reading when one of my favorite characters got addicted to morphine (Iam romantic like that).

The book is very hacker friendly. It has not dated that badly, apart from a section where he stores some data onto a floppy disk. If I was more keen I would have played with the perl script included.

I did enjoy one section, where one of the mathematicians writes down an equation for the amount of sex he needs to work effectively.