Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Anathem is one of the most interesting novels I have ever listened to, and that’s saying something. This tale of monks and nuns (sort of) dedicated to math, physics and  philosophy discovering something unusual happening to the sun and their deductions about what is happening in the world outside their cloister is actually quite enjoyable and inspiring.1  Neal Stephenson makes me want to believe in this three-thousand-year-old science-as-religion order, and wish we had one (Buddhists don’t count).

It is read by William Dufris, who also narrated the Audible version of Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, which I really should review since I listened to all three of them, and Dufris reads them like he wrote them, which is very enjoyable indeed.

Exciting update: I’m about three-quarters through and no zombies yet, although there has been attempted murder, actual murder, a riot, invasion of a kind, aerial bombardment, a volcano incident, dirty tricks in academic politics and gratuitous philosophy of the most platonic kind.

 

1 I had a bit of an epiphany during part of this book, wherein I realized that I enjoy a similar if less intense intellectual stimulation improving the world through the collaboration with my fellows designing laboratory equipment.