Cryptonomicon

Executive Summary: If you're a computer or math geek, this book is a must read. If you like geeky humor mixed with world war 2, and random side tangents, this might also be a book for you.Audio book: I listened to the unabridged audio book by William Dufris. This is the first that I have listened by him. While he didn't do distinct voices for all the characters he did do some as well as a few accents. His German accent was particularly good.The audio suffers a bit from being unabridged, but thankfully in only a few places. I imagine the book has a bunch of white space/different font for some of the these parts where codes are written out, but Mr. Dufris is forced to read everything out and it can be a bit tedious.This is my only relatively minor complaint. For a 42+ hour book, this occurred very infrequently.Full ReviewThis book has been on my to read list for a long time. [b:Snow Crash 830 Snow Crash Neal Stephenson http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320544000s/830.jpg 493634] is one of my favorite books. While this book is more historical fiction than sci-fi (and certainly not cyberpunk), it has the same geeky humor that I loved in [b:Snow Crash 830 Snow Crash Neal Stephenson http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320544000s/830.jpg 493634] so much.The book has two time periods: The 1940's starting shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the mid-late 90s. There are several point of view characters for the 40's timeline, but the primary one is Lawrence Waterhouse, an often misunderstood and awkward mathematical genius.Waterhouse gets blown off by Einstein but becomes friends with Alan Turing. He eventually is put to work breaking codes of both the Japanese and later the Germans during the war.Meanwhile in the “present” Randall is Unix Guru working with his friend Abby to set up their next business venture in the Philippines.The other point of view characters include Goto Dango, a Japanese soldier, and Bobby Shafto an American soldier. Their stories augment the main narrative of Waterhouse's.This book has several tangents, including one on beards and another on bicycles. Many of his tangents turn ordinary thinking into mathematical equations. I found most of them interesting if not amusing, but they are of little importance to the story, so I can see people complaining of the excess in what is a rather lengthy book.The stories of the two timelines eventually converge in a way that wasn't very apparent to me until about the midway point or so.I really enjoyed the book, although I'd be happy with some follow-up as I was left with several questions, though mostly minor ones.Most of my questions relate to the historical accuracy of many events in the story. People like Alan Turing were quite real, as was his involvement in the British efforts to break German codes during the war. There is work involving the Enigma, but the names of the Japanese codes appear to have been changed, as well as replacing several of the people involved with fictional characters.At some point I hope to find/read a non-fiction book (or books) on the breaking of codes in World War 2, and I am now fascinated by it.