I’ve picked up the first book of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, Quicksilver for the second time this week, to read. As with his earlier Cryptomonicon I’ve had to take two running starts at the book to get rolling in it. I believe it was more than a year after I purchased Cryptomonicon before I started it the second time and finished it. Now it easily ranks as one of my top ten all time favorite books, and depending on what I’ve read recently, it hovers around the number one spot. The receipt being used as my bookmark indicates that I’ve had this copy of Quicksilver since October 3, 2003; hopefully like fine wine it has aged well on my shelf.
The Baroque Cycle is daunting in just sheer number of pages: 2,618 by my count. And I’m all the way up to 50. A least I have all three volumes here and ready, so that I can continue the story without interruption. Of course more pages is good - this story should last me the rest of the year and maybe beyond.