Closing the Book: Anathem

May 4, 2009

With the mixed feelings of sadness and accomplishment that typically comes with finishing an engrossing (and challenging) novel, I closed the back cover this weekend on Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. I’m astonished still by how well Stephenson was able to weave extended discussions of philosophy, theology and even geometry into a narrative that gains an unstoppable head of steam — all within a world textured with the rhythms of thousands of years civilization and inhabited by real people I came to care about.