Neal Stephenson, Anathem

Neal Stephenson, Anathem. If you want a better introduction than I can give, Neal Stephenson reads from Anathem here: http://www.longnow.org/anathem/. I had more fun reading this book than was good for me. I hope that my future patients don't suffer too much from the effects of me reading it instead of studying (I did delay posting to study, at least). Every effort I've made to describe the story to friends has been a failure like this: "OK, so there is this society of math monks, kind of like the Pythagoreans, and it's another universe, and they live in maths which are like monasteries but cooler, and there is this awesome clock, and they garden, and learn stuff all the time and chant, and and and..."(here is where I drool on myself and am forced to stop torturing my friends). While I agreed with this criticism early on, I stopped noticing once I got into the story, and by the time I finished, I read all of the appendices, the glossary, and all the online acknowledgments. Maybe the Baroque Cycle was more fun, but I need to read Anathem again to decide.