I wish the book was a little more clear about when these stories were written. The first ones felt a little rough. I found them a little cloying, until I tried reading them in Miranda July’s voice in my head. That helped a lot, but it wasn’t until “Making Love in 2003″ that one of the stories really stood on its own for me. The insertion of Madeleine L’Engle into the story is a little odd, but that story was probably the one that worked the best for me.

This was my third attempt at reading this book, but I finally made it through this time. Usually, I make it through to the detailed description of dog dismemberment (which is a pretty reasonable place to lose momentum in a book), but I pushed through and found that it got pretty interesting. At least for the first third. The second section lost my interest a little bit. The adventures of Jack Shaftoe didn’t really interest me too much. It felt a little bit like Stephenson just needed to add some action. The (very) lengthy chase scene with the witches felt gratuitous.

The last section regained my interest a bit, but I’m not sure I’m as interested in the development of our modern thinking about economy as I am in the development of our modern thinking about science. Also, I find Eliza to be a fairly horrible character. I’d sort of forgotten that Stephenson is not particularly good at writing female characters (Nell from The Diamond Age is perhaps the exception, since Stephenson basically writes her as gender-neutral as possible). I’m kind of dreading the rest of the series, if she’s going to remain a main character.