Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Neal Stephenson at Barnes & Noble

Tonight was the author's appearance at the Union Square bookstore. He gave a brief introduction and took questions for about 45 minutes. Nearly all the questions were about his writing process or broad elements of his books, and most elicited interesting responses from Stephenson. There were a few geeky text-based questions, including one about how to pronounce "Qwghlm" to which Stephenson clearly had a well-rehearsed answer. After the Q&A he took his time signing books for the attendees. I opted for the "no inscription" option, so I just have a scrawl on the title page of my new copy of "Quicksilver." I did have the chance to tell him that reading "Cryptonomicon" was the highlight of my summer of 2000, and that I'm looking forward to his new book being the highlight of the upcoming winter. It's going to take me a while to read it. I have several other books I'd like to read at the same time, so I'm not sure yet where I'll fit in 900 pages of historical fiction. I've read the first chapter, and so far, it's great stuff. I have to decide if I want to haul this thing back and forth to the office every day. If I do, I have to dedicate some time at lunch to reading it to make the workout worthwhile.

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