татко Крокодил

Around the discussion in slashdot today about Stephenson’s new book I found it strange how many people are afraid of thousand pages to read and how many weren’t able to read Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver. I fing it strange that a book can scare someone with its size, so I decided to write something for these stressed people – about some really great (and big) books and why they deserve to be read.

1) “The name of the rose” and “Foucalt’s pendulum” by Umberto Eco. They may be 10-15% of notes, but are incredibly well written, full with interesting things and it’s not a coincidence that they’re classic.

2) Cryptonomicon and the Baroque cycle by Neal Stephenson – maybe the second by depth writer after Umberto Eco. Incredibly interesting, covers all kinds of topics, reading him is an incredible pleasure.

3) “I, Claudius” by Robert Graves – the best book on the topic of Rome that I’ve found.

4) All that’s been published in the “Malazan book of the fallen” – until now (7 out of 10) there’s no weak book. Humongous world, lots of stories, lots of characters, it’s almost at my limit of remembering and co-relating stories and threads :)

5) “The GULAG archipelago” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn – the great historical significance aside, the book is really fascinating and well written.

7) “In absentia reports for Bulgaria” by Georgi Markov – I’ve already written about it…

7) “Requiem for Homo Sapiens” by David Zindell – depth, ideas, style… Although the action is somewhat linear, the series is incredible.

8) “The fountainhead” by Ayn Rand – mostly because of her philosophy and the incredible description.

9) “IT” by Stephen King – one of his best books.

I can go on and on, but I’m a bit constrained by the minimal size to be no less than thousand pages (or around that) – and there are some incredible things that are 500, 100 or even 10… It seems far easier to read than to write about the things I read, and writing about all that I read will be somewhat hard…
(I can do a posting on the topic of “my favourite books”, but remembering and writing them will take a week or two :) ).

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