Currently reading this. I'm only 1/4 of the way in, and enjoying it. My only real gripe so far is that it switches between characters so rapidly. Sometimes it feels like I'll only spend 2 or 3 pages on one character before it switches to the next, then 3 pages later I'm back to the first. It's not all that bad, it just makes it really hard to pick up any kind of momentum.
Guys make me a feel a little better. I was trying to read Ananthem by Neal Stephenson. Couldn't. Just got so bogged down in all of the descriptions and 150-200 pages in, nothing's happened i go to wiki and the first sentence (of the sequence of events) has not happened
I've given up and moved on to Clash of Kings. I had Ananthem for a while so i decided to pause my song of fire and ice reading but i just can't guys.
Tell me I'm justified please
I just wanted to repost tell me I'm somewhat justified. Are all Neal Stephenson's book's super slow/really descriptive?
You're absolutely justified. If you aren't feeling a book, there's no reason to waste your time on it. I absolutely loved Anathem and it was probably my favorite book of 2008, but if you're not sucked into the world, you might as well bail out. Even though it can take a while for the primary plot thread to get started, I doubt your feelings on the book would change once you got started.
I wouldn't abandon Neal Stephenson altogether yet though. He really has a pretty diverse catalog. (The only attribute that all his novels seem to share are people complaining about the endings). If you didn't enjoy Anathem, you may not enjoy his Baroque Cycle, but Snow Crash and Diamond Age are very different beasts and I wouldn't write them off based on Anathem. I would definitely give Cryptonomicon a chance too. Though it's as thick as Anathem, I think the meat of the story picks up pretty quickly (but I could be wrong, it's been a decade since I read it).
In any case, this has given me the itch to read Anathem again, and after that I'll probably give his REAMDE a read. Anyone have any thoughts on that? I know literally nothing about it.