I know how to read, too

In the interest of showing you, my loyal readers, that I do more than just sit around all day watching TV, I decided to blog about a book I'm sitting around all day reading. So here goes.

Years ago I passed through a phase where I was very interested in codes. I read several books on the subject, including a 1164-page tome by David Kahn called The Codebreakers, which took me the better part of two summers to get through.* But codes haven't been on my radar screen for oh, about 7 years now. And then a month or so ago I was reading a list of great science fiction books by Nancy Pearl (who may well be the world's first librarian celebrity, as opposed to celebrity librarian), and Cryptonomicon was at the top of the list. And I, ersatz Latin scholar that I am, thought, "Oh, gross, that's that book about dead people," but it turns out I was thinking of the Necronomicon, and Cryptonomicon is actually about codes. The book is even longer than the Kahn book, so who knows when I'll finish it, but I'm having a heckuva good time so far.

The reason I'm bringing this up in the first place is that I can quote a passage to you that I adore and identify with. (Those who know me will know that I always love a novel infinitely more if I can identify with at least one of the characters in it.) So anyway, here are the thoughts of Randy Waterhouse, a computer geek of a character, on exercise and fitness.

"He is in the habit of doing a lot of vigorous walking. By the standards of the body nazis who infest California and Seattle, this is only a marginal improvement over (say) sitting in front of a television chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes and eating suet from a tub. But he has stuck to his walking doggedly while his friends have taken up fitness fads and dropped them." (78) And later, "RESPECT THE PEDESTRIAN, the signs say, but the drivers, the physical environment, local land use customs, and the very layout of the place conspire to treat the pedestrian with the contempt he so richly deserves. Randy would get more respect if he went to work on a pogo stick with a propeller beanie on his head. Every morning the bellhops ask him if he wants a taxi, and practically lose consciousness when he says no." (89)

Yes! Yes! Yes! This is my experience exactly! My hat is off to you, Neal Stephenson!

*I feel that it was reading this book, more than all my years of formal education, that finally got it through my skull how writing could be scholarly and well-researched while still remaining accessible and interesting to the reader. I realized this in library school when I wrote a paper on the history of the Copyright Clearance Center, a potential snoozefest of a topic if there ever was one, and my instructor gave me an A and wrote in the margin, "A real page turner!" All this is my long way of saying that it was well worth the two years it took me to read the thing.