Blurt!Sben

Finished rereading Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Boy do I have complicated feelings about this. On the one hand, the concepts are fascinating and the storytelling is top-notch. On the other, there’s a bunch of pandering to nerds and contempt for non-nerds, especially in the first half of the book, not to mention the casual sexism. (I would be curious to see what the book would have been like in the alternate universe where he wrote it today.) I used to recommend this book without reservations, but now it would be more along the lines of The Lord of the Rings (read this, but don’t fail to notice that the people with dark skin are bad guys).

Sunday, May 29, 2022, 6:43:10pm PDT