World Book Day 2020

This guy

Neal Stephenson. I have read three of his books (technically eight, but we'll get into that later) and they have been the kind of book that sticks with you. Like Dune. Lord of the Rings. Rama. This series blew me away with it's characterizations, concept and story.

The Series

"The Baroque Cycle"
Eight books published in the form of three volumes over the span of two years. It's a historical work of fiction with a few admitted anachronisms. I personally didn't know enough about history to let those bug me, but some of you with a history major might? I don't know, but I doubt it. It's THAT good.
I haven't read this series since it was first published and I'm overdue for a reread so I felt I would post about it before I ordered a new set. (lost everything in Hurricane Ike. Fuck Hurricane Ike)
Anyway, this is one of the first books to actually piss me off at an author. I don't want to spoil anything but I was completely dumbfounded at one point. The book is brutal and pulls no punches about the harsh environment of the time.
Since I only remember the broad strokes let me copy/pasta from my favorite book store's page concerning the first volume in this series:"In Quicksilver, the first volume of the "Baroque Cycle," Neal Stephenson launches his most ambitious work to date. The novel, divided into three books, opens in 1713 with the ageless Enoch Root seeking Daniel Waterhouse on the campus of what passes for MIT in eighteenth-century Massachusetts. Daniel, Enoch's message conveys, is key to resolving an explosive scientific battle of preeminence between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz over the development of calculus. As Daniel returns to London aboard the Minerva, readers are catapulted back half a century to recall his years at Cambridge with young Isaac. Daniel is a perfect historical witness. Privy to Robert Hooke's early drawings of microscope images and with associates among the English nobility, religious radicals, and the Royal Society, he also befriends Samuel Pepys, risks a cup of coffee, and enjoys a lecture on Belgian waffles and cleavage-?all before the year 1700. In the second book, Stephenson introduces Jack Shaftoe and Eliza. "Half-Cocked" Jack (also know as the "King of the Vagabonds") recovers the English Eliza from a Turkish harem. Fleeing the siege of Vienna, the two journey across Europe driven by Eliza's lust for fame, fortune, and nobility. Gradually, their circle intertwines with that of Daniel in the third book of the novel. The book courses with Stephenson's scholarship but is rarely bogged down in its historical detail. Stephenson is especially impressive in his ability to represent dialogue over the evolving worldview of seventeenth-century scientists and enliven the most abstruse explanation of theory. Though replete with science, the novel is as much about the complex struggles for political ascendancy and the workings of financial markets. Further, the novel's literary ambitions match its physical size. Stephenson narrates through epistolary chapters, fragments of plays and poems, journal entries, maps, drawings, genealogic tables, and copious contemporary epigrams. But, caught in this richness, the prose is occasionally neglected and wants editing. Further, anticipating a cycle, the book does not provide a satisfying conclusion to its 900 pages. These are minor quibbles, though. Stephenson has matched ambition to execution, and his faithful, durable readers will be both entertained and richly rewarded with a practicum in Baroque science, cypher, culture, and politics. --Patrick O'Kelley"

And if you feel like checking it out, here's my favorite book store:
http://www.thriftbooks.com/w/quicksilver_neal-stephenson/261150

If anyone decides to give it a try, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. It's a wild, uplifting and heartbreaking ride through history with a lot of cool events unfolding around everyone involved.