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i'm thoroughly enjoying Cryptonomicon. it seems to be science fiction...but you know, while science and maths play a certain role in the book, i only think of it as "novel". a multi-layered, clever, extremely well-written (in Stephenson's terrific style) novel. it defies genre. just as Casablanca is a great film and not a great buddy movie/war movie/romance movie...

bloody hell, what a novel!!!

I haven't one-to-ten-ned books until now, so I have to think about it still a little....yes, Kav 'n Clay is maybe even in the niner realm. I hope to read more of Chabon's books, that Yiddish Policeman sounded promising.

@Stieg Larsson - my impression of the Swedish is now - a few millions of sick bastards, something like the North Koreans of Northern Europe. But maybe that's what you start to think about once you've had enough of handy DIY furniture, elks and lovely lakes. Spiced with improbabilities, lengthy explanations of what I already understood, but in the end, an utterly satisfying crime novel read. I have read only two of Rankin's books - so far I liked them a lot, especially the little dialogues about the music - "Did you like that Mogwai tape I gave you last week?" - "Ehm, um, yes, especially the lyrics". "What was that band?" - "The Cocteau Twins. They're from Grangemouth." - "Ah, that explains everything, all that chemical stuff in the water..." Definitely have to check out more of his stuff, but for now it's:

much easier to digest than this Baroque Trilogy...the first 200 pages left me breathless...perhaps 20 of the best first 20 pages i've ever read anywhere.... "From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible. "