Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

About a month before I read Cryptonomicon, I checked out and started to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Too daunted by the thickness of the 1,000+ page novel, I quit reading it and decided from then on not to read any more books longer than five hundred pages unless I personally possessed my own copy of it. No more checking out library books of that length.

Then in June a friend of mine recommended Cryptonomicon to me. I happened to be going to the library that same day and on a whim checked it out, completely forgetting about the 500+ page decision I had made before. Cryptonomicon, in paperback form, spans about 950 pages. But I read it all in about eighteen days, in competition with my friend to finish it before he did.

It was pretty good. Educational. Math geeks like me would like it. I learned all sorts of things about cryptography and computing that I had never had any interest in before. Van Eck Phreaking comes to mind. Plus all the World War II history was fascinating. And it spanned such a large geography that I was always interested. The United States, the Phillipines, Australia, England, Sweden, the Mediterranean Sea. It had a lot of variety. It had captivating characters. It made me think.

It didn't have a lot of soul. I don't know how else to put it than that. It just didn't seem to have an important message to convey. But then again, maybe it doesn't have to. Books that are simply entertaining have their place. Books that are both entertaining and educational besides, like this one, are even better. So what if it didn't change or challenge me? They don't all have to be Girlfriend In A Coma by Douglas Coupland or On The Road by Jack Kerouac.

Cryptonomicon
The Solitaire Encryption Algorithm
The Handbook of Applied Cryptography