Digital Wanderer

Promised to write about music, but I'm too lazy.
   I'll just say that I finished reading Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon". I probably wouldn't be lying much, if I called the book post-cyberpunk sci-fi. The previous two books by Stephenson that I read - "Snow Crash" and "The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" are also strong (take the title alone!), but Cryptonomicon is something else.
Something without equal. To have a work of fiction seriously explain real encryption algorithms with formulas and examples - 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 functioning of modern Western high-tech corporations
2)The intertwining of three independent storylines, elegantly converging at the end of the book
3)Humor expressed through an impeccable style and vivid postmodern language
4)A treasure hunt in classic adventure traditions
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 temper my fierce enthusiasm and compensate for the hole in my cultural baggage, I'm reading "War and Peace". Yes, yes, I didn't read it in school - I got scared that I wouldn't be able to stomach the murky snooze-fest. But now I've devoured a third of the first volume in just a couple of days - it turned out to be nowhere near as boring as it could have been.