perfidy

Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

His critics might decry his tendency to make all his characters sound the same and his penchant for discursiveness, but I happen to love Neal Stephenson for those very things. Having now read the System Of The World trilogy twice through (the second time all out of order), I'm convinced that even if he is not a major author he is destined to become the patron saint of overeducated American geeks for at least a generation. Reading Quicksilver a second time through with the plot of the whole trilogy firmly in mind allows the reader to focus on the little things the discourses are explaining - the long description of the economics and logistics of siege warfare. The squalid premodern lives of German and Polish peasantry. The tangled pleasures of court politics and the education of the elite. Money.

There's nothing - nothing - better in this world than a thick swashbuckling novel you can learn from.