The Baroque Cycle

The Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson. Newton, Leibnitz, the birth of the Royal Society - and pirates!

- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin - Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts - The Tao Te Ching - The Gateless Gate (Koun Yamada translation/editing) - The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World) by Neal Stephenson - The Invisibles by Grant Morrison - Incerto (Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile, The Bed of Procrustes) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Iron John by Robert Bly - Catch 22 by Joseph Heller - The Character of Physical Law by Richard P. Feynman - Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges - 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Pharmakon by Dale Pendell - The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss - Greek Mythology by Edith Hamilton - The Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual by Gary Gygax et al - Introduction to Algorithms by Charles E. Leiserson, Clifford Stein, Ronald Rivest, and Thomas H. Cormen

I'll second The Baroque Cycle (or Cryptonomicon: it doesn't matter which). But might I also suggest the works of Terry Pratchett, particularly Discworld? Sir Pterry's work is among the best I've ever read. If you're looking for something a bit fluffier than the above, then I would suggest The Dresden Files. Sure, it's mindless fluff, but man, it's good mindless fluff. The same applies to The Codex Alera (which apparently resulted from a bet that the author couldn't make a good book from an awful idea: the idea given was the lost roman legion crossed with Pokemon). I can also suggest Ready Player one in this category. Ready Player One is essentially geek culture (especially gaming culture) furiously... well, you know. Giving itself one. But it's a fun ride (unlike Armada. But that's another story).…

The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. This trilogy is a great mash up of science history and sci-Fi (almost)

Been a big Stephenson fan since Cryptonomicon. Enjoyed the Baroque Trilogy, Anathem & Reamde, but non of them are as good as Cryptonomicon. It's a bit like be an Umberto Eco fan - nothing since Name of the Rose has been quite as good. Or Wes Anderson for that matter; there's been good stuff, but nothing's touched the heights of Royal Tenenbaums.

I can see that being an issue. I'm in the same habit with LOTR, ASOIAF and Harry Potter, reading each series once every two years or so, and it crushes my ability to read a lot of new books. I've avoided rereading Discworld so far because I know that it will never be as magical as the first read through. But oh god, Baroque Cycle was unparalleled from a character-building perspective. I loved every second of it.

Baroque Cycle, for sure. And I'm stuck in a loop where I continue to read all the Discworld novels, over and over…

The Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson - It was 3000+ pages all told, and I LOVED it. His writing has always enthralled me, and I was hooked from the start Every Discworld Novel - Terry Pratchett - Not much can be said that hasn't already been said a million times over. If you haven't read them yet, start now The Theory of Poker - David Sklansky - Helped out my poker game tremendously. I'm much more ev+ now

The two books I've read by Stephenson and really enjoyed. Never really got into the Baroque cycle because it's so long winded, but that should also be good.

As has already been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, most of Neil Stephenson's work is just great. Cryptonomicon is my favorite, but The Baroque Cycle (three books) is very good as well. If you're into crime/mystery fiction, the recently deceased Elmore Leonard was one of the best. A few of his books have been made into movies (Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, The Big Bounce) with mixed results, but I do I highly recommend reading the books, which are numerous. For a different sort of fiction, James Clavell's Shogun, Taipan, and Noble House are great. In fact, Noble House very well be my favorite book. It's a long (~1400 page) book about business dealings, political intrigue, and more. All set in the context of 1963 Hong Kong. Those who like a touch of historical fiction could take a look at Conn Uggulden. One of his series, The Conqueror, which is about the rise and fall of the Mongol empire is pretty interesting. The books are a light read, and not particularly complicated, but it's entertaining and has some neat historical bits.

The Baroque cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion and System of the World is awesome as well. Who doesn't want to read fiction about The Royal Society, Isaac Newton and Liebniz mixed in with phrases in the line with "In memory of Englands greatest swordsman, beaten to death with a club by an Irishman". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle

This may seem strange, but I have to recommend the baroque trilogy by Neal Stephenson. It made me imagine how scifi would have looked like in the 1600s.

I'm just finishing the last book of the The Baroque Cycle, and it's pretty good. I recommend making it through.

The Confusion - Neal Stephenson (I'm starting to tire a little of the female hero character who's in all his books, but on the whole, The Baroque Cycle, which this is the second volume of, has been very educational and always entertaining) The Visual Display of Quantative Information, Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, and Beautiful Evidence (I picked up all four books by Edward Tufte at his one day training course. At the 2011 SVG Open, I was blown away by Mike Bostock's D3 demo, and Niel Fraser told me to read all of Tuftes books to see where these revolutionary ways of displaying information came from) ESV Bible, actually hoping to find time to get my Python script running so I can download the audio, chapter by chapter, because the audio version I bought is nigh impossible to navigate.

The Baroque Cycle. It's absolutely brilliant, I recommend it to anyone with an interest in security or economics.

I've just started listening again to the unabridged Audible version of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle - I couldn't get into the book form but the audio book version is great. Last few Kindle books I've read were: See No Evil by Bob Baer, the experiences of a CIA case officer in the Middle East (which influenced the movie Syriana). Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis, about the Big Swinging Dicks of Wall Street. Decline and Fall by Chris Mullin, the diaries of one of the more decent members of the former Labour Government here in the UK.

The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt. The Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson.

His Baroque Trilogy I found to be the most inspiring read in the last few years - while it's easy to argue that it isn't strictly science fiction. Since it sets up characters who appear in Cryptonomicon, I feel I can get away with it. What the trilogy has in common with inspiring sci-fi is that it changes the way I look at the present - drastically. His characters are present for the beginnings of what we call science, the current economy and also on slave and pirate ships. He has brilliant physicists who are also alchemists and at war with themselves over not being able to resolve their own contradictions. (Newton) It's fiction about the history of science - and it's weirder and whackier and grander than anything else I've ever read. (Take THAT Tolstoy!( (you hack!) Of course, I'll also second Snowcrash as a must-read. Same with Cryptonomicon.

All of William Gibson and all of Neal Stephenson (especially Cryptonomicon and Baroque cycle series)