Date Finished: 9/3/26
i am freaking enjoying snowcrash so much at the minute. it is so vibrant so colourful so utterly peculiar and over the top but the characters take the world they live in so seriously despite it all. i really admire that sort of worldbuilding. it's a curated sort of absurdity which is fun to read. I also like the way that it is written, it's quite witty and fast-paced, pretty loose and ahead of its time. i find that a lot of 20th century novels have a more unique and less uniform writing style which I enjoy a lot more than the regular sort. i feel like when these authors were learning to write there was probably a lot less of the 'writing rules' that you see around now and it works to their benefit. well anyways im interested to see where the plot goes. hiro and yt are interesting protagonists. ill update again when ive finished it or have more to say.
Hey me after i finished it here. it was gooood. interesting wikipedia esque storytelling in the middle... just a fun journey really. some strange choices near the end i don't think were necessarily needed? it's pretty misogynistic, if unknowingly and just through ignorance. which isn't an excuse for that massive oversight in your storytelling. but that's just the way most books are, and i'll probably end up mentioning how i don't think the female characters are written up to scratch with the male ones in most of my reviews of books/movies. once you start to see it, you don't unsee it, type of thing. but other than that, this book was good.
as for lasting impressions, i'm pretty inspired by its worldbuilding and absurdist take on a future of america-- especially since it's a future that appears to exist already, in some forms, despite how truly ridiculous it is. it was almost postal 2-esque to me in terms of its farfetched parody of society. it's probably vaguely bigoted, hasn't aged the best, but it's an interesting scifi book for anyone interested in the genre. i'd mainly read it for the parody-style worldbuilding and very bouncy, comedic written style. the writing was very funny and charming, very distinct voice. it's much appreciated to read a scifi author who doesn't quite take the world so seriously, it's interesting to see a world which takes itself seriously despite being intentionally UNserious. very cool. id probably give it a solid 7/10 but i'm pretty inconsistent with rating and numbers. 7 feels right to me.
Date Finished: 9/3/26
i'm not sure whether or not i can say this book changed my life or not. it didn't really, but changed my scope of literature as a whole. there's something in this book i haven't found in modern literature. it explores so much; it is insane in the most literal definition of the word. it goes beyond what you can define as queer. there is so much detail, everything accounted for, i understand why people say this is his magnum opus despite not having read his other works (yet; weaveworld i've got my eyes on you). the characters are investing, and as usual with works written by men, the only thing i have to complain about is that i feel the female character/s were sniped of a grander story arc. judith had so much going for her by the end, just to be given a new husband and a kid. which isn't bad, i just feel like it was besides the point of her story. but i can headcanon differently in my own mind. her story was moving despite it not sticking the landing necessarily.
i feel like i don't entirely understand everything the book was trying to get across to me, in fact that is almost guaranteed. this book took me over a year to read. it was incredibly long and my relationship with it was very on-and-off. i wasn't really intending to understand everything it set out to achieve when i started reading it, but i can appreciate that despite it all, it's there for those who want to look. i can say that i never really expected the first book i've ever read to display an intersex experience and a character who uses any (though more specifically it/its) pronouns to be from 1997. you'd expect something like that to come from more recently. it suggests something grander about the perception of gender and queerness over time. that's all i can really say about it; strange book. captivating, eclectic, inspiring. i hope someday, someone, if not myself, can achieve something of this scope and surpass it. read it yourself. if anything i've said interests you, it's worth the experience, even if you don't finish it. i'd rate it an 8.5/10, which feels like an understatement, but it did lack in some areas for me. i wouldn't go out of my way to call it one of my favourite books of all time even if it is one of the most interesting, and arguably well-written.