It took me a little over three months, but this morning at 2 am I finished reading the final volume of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, The System Of The World. I began reading this series a long time ago but didn't make real progress until I took the first two books to Costa Rica with me over the holidays this past winter. In January I thought I was close, but over the last couple of months my progress has been more like 5-10 pages at night before I go to sleep.
It's a bittersweet feeling to be done with this series. I wish I hadn't stumbled across some spoilers, but nevertheless the ending was predictable. I also thought this book dragged. On the whole, the most fun of the three books was The Confusion and that's probably because there was so much Jack Shaftoe in it.
Finishing the Baroque Cycle wasn't as satisfying as the last equivalent series, the Gene Wolfe Short Sun series. Of course, Gene Wolfe and Neal Stephenson are trying to do very different things in their writing. The Baroque Cycle did pique my interest in British and European history of that era. It was interesting to watch Stage Beauty while I was still reading this series. I felt almost submerged in Restoration England.
1 comment:
Weirdly, one of the things that kept me engaged in the scaling of Mount Stephenson was the "boring" stuff: the development of a system of capital, stock markets, Eliza's "selling short" technique in I think the first book to make a fortune, stock market manipulation, etc.
Largely, I think this was due to my working for a trading software company during that period, so I was watching the effects of the evolution of the system as I was reading about the system's evolution.
Also, Sean said that the only reason he managed to read any of the books at all was by just reading the Jack Shaftoe sections. He acknowledged that by the third book, this left him completely confused as to what was going on, and he was forced to go back and read the other parts. I have no idea whether he ultimately finished it or not :)
peace
Matt
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