Book Four

Reamde is the best thriller I can ever remember reading. I expect from Neal that I will learn something new about math, science, computers, or technology, and Reamde did not disappoint. I learned about gold farming. I learned about massively multiplayer online games (sic.). I learned about Iowan male culture. I learned about private jet use. I learned a lot about guns and combat. Well, especially guns and combat.
I have read Zodiac, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, and Snow Crash, and think, of those, this is up there. For disclosure's sake, of my top hundred favorite books, all of these are on the list. Of my top thirty, all but Zodiac are on the list.

Although it is many wonderful things, Reamde devotes most of its energy to action. In this regard, it outpaces even Snow Crash. What qualities make the best book? It does not have the page to page velocity of the others, but Cryptonomicon has always been my favorite, because it brought such beautiful math to life, and remained entertaining throughout. The Diamond Age shone in this way as well, with its handling of code. Does Reamde show enough techno-fun stuff that it can keep up with these? With as much action (and exceptionally well-written action, at that) as it has, does it matter? As you maybe surmised, I've changed my mind about four times while writing this so far.
The volume of combat action is so great in Reamde that it threatens to overwhelm the other, more enjoyable, technical aspects. That said, the action propels the story forward. On a side note, each of his previous books had a character or two that I found myself embracing: that skater girl with the bumper stickers, the lady of the primer, and the cryptographer, for example. I know it's a cliche, but he brings the characters to life. I feel as if I know what several of them would say in most situations, and how they would spend their time given certain conditions. It would be fun to sit down and talk to several of them.
I don't know whether I could tell you if Reamde is better than Cryptonomicon. I know the tech ideas in it are more exciting, even if all he gives them are a supporting role. Maybe the best thing to say about it is that it left me hungry for more of his ideas, and was exciting enough, from a plot/action standpoint that I wasn't bothered reading a long book (1044 pages, it turns out).
I didn't really go into this with a thesis, so hopefully the structure of those ideas don't annoy the crap out of you. I'd say to spend a few hours reading the thing. It's a shocking, funny, entertaining book.

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I didn't climb today, but I did climb yesterday. I got it in my head to go and work on Hang Ten, this v7 that I tried last year and got totally shut-down on. No one else was there, but I walked with some measure of shame back to my truck that night. I didn't know if I was tired, or if the climb was really hard for me (or just hard), or if I just wasn't into it, but I did not do well.
This time, I decided to go back armed with lots of pads. So I used my car tie downs to cinch the three full sized pads together, and carried the briefcase pad along. I stopped at the Sloping Joe boulder, and did a bunch of problems there, including this kind of scary v6, with a very insecure (sloping) topout that made my left elbow hurt for the rest of the day. I did it last year, but it took me lots of tries, and I did it this year on my second try, so that was nice.
Over at the Undertow boulder, I took a long look at Hang Ten. It is a ten foot, swooping roof filled with sharp, positive pockets. It has a couple of testy little moves at the beginning, and a couple of big dynos at the end. When I tried it last year, I only had one pad. Yesterday, I carpeted the ground with the things. And I worked it from the end, doing the last dyno and topout on my first try, linking into them from the middle of the route, and then figuring out the start. I found a couple of easier ways to do each of the moves. After all that, I gave it a couple of tries, screamed a lot, and then, suddenly, felt confident that I would be able to do it. I gave it a good effort from the start, fell at the last move, and then, after resting a moment, I went back to the start, and managed to link the whole problem.
Why devote so much space to talking about it? I think because, for me, it was a technical problem, and I am glad that I was able to piece it together more effectively than I was last year. The extra planning (excessively taped fingers to prevent skin shearing on sharp pockets, carrying 4 pads over by myself, using my feet more carefully, giving it my full attention, and drilling down the beta on each move) felt silly when I was doing it, but actually worked. I ended up being successful on a problem that I could not do last year. Feels like progress.
Afterwards, I went over to the North 40 with just one pad, and cruised around doing some problems that I hadn't done before. I did this amazing pair of v5s called something like Bad Days and Better Days, which got me thinking of that Ralph Fiennes movie set in 1999. (When I finally watched it, last year, I was underwhelmed, but glad that I wasn't watching some of the other abysmal sci-fi that came out around the same time: Johnny Mnemonic, or that Russell Crowe piece of crap. At least Ralph Fiennes is an unparalleled badass (well, except maybe paralleled by Daniel Day Lewis)).
I also did maybe half a dozen v4s and under, which, all told, made for a great way to spend the rest of the day. I noticed the sun set behind The Prophet wall just as I was topping out a problem and walking down, and I got to thinking how sad I was that the day was over. I had done some things, was sore as hell, and I'd made the most of it. I guess, when the time comes to stop, that's about as much as you can ask for.