So, I am a reader. Of books.
In theory, anyway.
So as it currently stands, I am reading the novel ‘Cryptonomicon’, by Neal Stephenson.
It is possibly a very good book. It’s hard to say, really, on account of after a couple of months, I’m only 175 pages in.
The book is 1,000 pages, which means that I’m roughly 2/10s finished.
Reading is great, and super rewarding in terms of exploring ideas and triggering the imagination.
But it can also be really frickin’ hard, sometimes.
The chapter I read last night was roughly 11 pages, and consisted entirely of a man devising a mathematical formula to figure out when Alan Turing’s bicycle chain would break.
There are two, not at all mutually exclusive possibilities in play here: either this is absolute genius; or it’s really, really annoying.
I am trying, to the best of my ability to articulate why this is so hard, and why I’m so determined to finish the book.
First, the obvious: if I didn’t let ‘Name Of The Rose’ defeat me, with it’s endless pages of historically accurate Christian doctrine debates and/or descriptions of interior design, then I’ll be damned if I’m going to turn tail and run away from a book that’s based around a subject I’m actually interested in (cryptography), especially when it is, in a technical sense, very well written.
But when you’re nearly 200 pages in, and there seems to be very little in the way of genuine incident or narrative progress; when everything seems weirdly discursive and rambling; when you’re left questioning whether the intense level of detail is relevant to anything larger than the present moment…
…well, like I said. Reading is frickin’ hard sometimes.
But we do it anyway. Why? Because we can lord it over people.
And being able to act all superior is the best gift of all…
Pryorball. 