What are you reading?

[Liffguard]

I tried to read Stephenson's Quicksilver a few years ago but in the early going I found the book as boring as it was enormous - we have a huge hardcover of it. So at the bookstore I wa torn between Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. I settled on Snow Crash because I've heard so much heaping praise for it. If it's as great as I've heard - or even just good - I'll go get The Diamond Age.

Snow Crash is definitely a fun read. Word of warning though, don't go in expecting to take it particularly seriously. It has some dark themes typical of the cyberpunk genre but overall it's tone is mostly towards the lighter end of the spectrum. A lot of the praise it gets is precisely because of its relatively light-hearted nature, fast pace and heavy use of irony but it's not a heavyweight book like a lot of other Stephenson works. I can probably best describe it as Ghost in the Shell meets Judge Dredd meets Idiocracy. The fact that the main character's name is Hiro Protagonist should give you a good idea of what the story's like.