Digital Wanderer

Promised to write about music, but too lazy.
   I'll just say that I finished "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. I probably wouldn't be lying much if I call the book post-cyberpunk sci-fi. The previous two Stephenson books I read - "Snow Crash" and "The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" are also solid (just look at the title!), but Cryptonomicon is something else.
Something without parallel. Real encryption algorithms with formulas and examples being explained in all seriousness in a work of fiction - it's hard to even imagine. And considering the presence of
1)A ton of plausible historical and technical details about World War II and the inner workings of modern Western high-tech corporations
2)An intertwining of three independent storylines, elegantly converging at the end of the book
3)Humor expressed through a flawless style and a vivid, postmodern language
4)A treasure hunt in the classic adventure tradition
It's hard to call the book anything but a masterpiece.
I was especially impressed by the explanation of how the German "Enigma" cipher machine works using a bicycle chain as an example and the description of the proper way to eat cereal "pillows" with milk.
You can download the book at https://lib.aldebaran.ru

   To tone down the furious enthusiasm and compensate for a gap in my cultural baggage, I'm reading "War and Peace". Yes, yes, I didn't read it in school - I was afraid I wouldn't be able to slog through the murky bore. But now I've swallowed in a couple of days already a third of the first volume - it turned out to be nowhere near as boring as it could have been.