I finished reading Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver sometime in early December, and it was quite a doozy (clocking in at 944 pages) to carry around on the bus for the three or so weeks that I was reading it.
I think I’ve put off writing about this book, because there is so much in it and I’m not really sure that anything that I might say could quite do it justice. Quicksilver covers a lot of ground: the Enlightenment; the Glorious Revolution; Jack Shaftoe’s vagabond adventures around Europe; Newton, Leibniz; Hooke and Pepys (among many others in the Royal Society); the origin of free-trading and the stock market; etc. etc. etc. It’s a vasty tome; a burbling stew; a feverish (hysterical?) historical epic. And, hey, I really liked it.
It’s true there were long stretches of the book where my eyes glazed over, the book resting heavily on my chest, and I had to put it down and read something shorter (and lighter!). But, it’s been quite some time since I’ve read anything this bold and daring. (The mind reels: Quicksilver is but 1 of 3 of Stephenson’s “Baroque Cycle”!) If you intimidated by 900+ page books, I’d steer clear of this one, though. Things bog down quite a bit around the 300 page mark or so, if I’m remembering correctly.
Some interesting related links:
A “wiki”-like site related to Quicksilver
Stephenson’s intentionally off-putting personal website
A long, rather interesting interview
Short and sweet interview
The official “Baroque Cycle” website, I think (flashbased)