From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…

Anathem

Neal Stephenson

Why we're reading this: This is a very dense piece by Stephenson. It's not his most accessible work but one of his best. Read it …more
[close] This is a very dense piece by Stephenson. It's not his most accessible work but one of his best. Read it as a sci-fi pick.

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Dec 07, 2010 Heidi rated it really liked it

Shelves: sff

Ooph, this one was a hard one to start. The first 200 pages or so were a bit slow. Then it got awesome. Brought up interesting worlds, interesting theories, interesting ideas throughout. Then the last 100 or pages were also pretty slow - or at least I was reading them going I want this to be over now.

The book overall was good. I found the ending a bit of a cheat, but I liked the concepts and ideas behind it. I thought the plot brought that to a fairly believable scenario, but not entirely justi ...more

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Sep 12, 2008 Nick rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, philosophy

This gets 5 stars with a caveat: if you're not at least somewhat familiar with ancient philosophy (specifically Plato's theory of Forms) and Quantum theory (specifically the Many Worlds interpretation), a lot of the book will go completely over your head. At the end Stephenson says that, as a work of fiction, he couldn't include footnotes although he wanted to. He includes everything he wanted to footnote on his website at http://www.nealstephenson.com/anathem... , but unless they really want to ...more

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