I’ll take “What happens in Winter” for $200, Alex

Next up is another book I finished a bit ago.  It was one I had always heard rave reviews about, but had never personally read.  So, at long last, a copy of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson was delivered to me via eBay.

This is a thouroughly entertaining, and very well-written, scifi tome.  Per some of the online reviews you can read, this book is what introduced the word “cyberpunk” into the lexicon.  Released in 1992, this book follows the adventures of a protagonist (conveniently?) named Hiro.  The main setting for the book is the Metaverse, what we, today, would simply call virtual reality running over the internet.  Reading the book now, 16 years after publication, you can really get a sense of how prescient Stephenson was.

So much of the technology and computing seems completely in line with what we have today.  Some of it you may have to look past, but there is very little of it that seems out of tune with our day and age.  Thankfully, we’ve not arrived at the rather harsh future Stephenson paints.  And we can also be thankful that we aren’t hooked into our computers (ala The Matrix) to the extent we can physically “crash” due to a computer virus (though it is an interesting theme that we may encounter som day yet).

In the end, I’d recommend this to any person who is intersting in scifi without hesitation.

Do You Speak It?

The first book up is one I finished up a bit ago, but took me some time to complete: ‘A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900′ by Andrew Roberts.  This book presents an interesting take on major historical events, showing how a common language (English) manage to unite the United States and the British Empire (and, subsequently, the nations that came from it).

This book is intended, if not in actuality, then in spirit, as a continuation of the works started by Winston Churchill.  While it is an unique view of historical events (and peppered with interesting, yet trivial tidbits), it is a history tome.  As such, it will depend on your tolerance for diving into history for how interesting you’ll find the book, or how quickly you’ll go through it.

Personally I found the book interesting, but got bogged down in the history of it (a trait of my own, no fault of the author’s).  In general, Mr. Roberts’ style is easy to read, but he does have a tendency of jumping around a bit, or slipping in some minor information that takes you out of the narrative flow.  In the end, I’d recommend this book to you if you’re interested in the intertwined history that America and the British Emprire had (and continue to have).