For my birthday, my sister’s boyfriend gallantly lugged all the way from California a pre-publication copy of Neal Stephenson’s latest novel, “REAMDE”. At just short of a thousand pages, it must have taken a fair chunk of his luggage allowance, and like a 3-hour movie, you can’t help but feel that a book that long might have benefited from a stricter editor. Certainly, Stephenson’s love of technical detail, and tendency to throw all his ideas into one pot, is very much in evidence. And yet I found myself utterly unable to put it down all the way through.
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