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| Subtitle | The Baroque Cycle Volume I |
| First Written | 2006 |
| Genre | Historical Fiction |
| Origin | US |
| Publisher | HarperTorch |
| ISBN-10 | 0060833165 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0060833169 |
| My Copy | hardback |
| First Read | July 23, 2012 |
Quicksilver
Want a taste of the mix of high- and low-brow adventure that you'll find here? Within fifty pages of each other, you'll find lengthy explanations of calculus, and an ostrich literally running around after someone has cut its head off with a sword, while mounted on a captured Turkish warhorse.
Noted on August 15, 2012
The long passages detailing court intrigue were the most tedious, but the little bits where Stephenson fits in old words and sidelong etymology make it (mostly worthwhile). It's a rare book written in this century that can get away with using the word 'reck.'
Noted on August 15, 2012
An alternating fun and excruciating novelization of the Enlightenment - yes, you read that right - as only Neal Stephenson could write it. You may love it, you may hate it, and if you're like me you will do both in equal measures.
Noted on August 15, 2012
Must business thee from hence remove?
Oh, that’s the worst disease of love,
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.
- John Donne, "Breake of Day"
Quoted on August 15, 2012
[an example of the crammed-in etymology:]
"How easy would it be to slip a sabot off one's foot and 'accidentally' let it fall into the gears --"
"Er ... maybe Ill post guards to prevent any such sabotage."
Quoted on August 15, 2012
The world smells bad, lass. Best hold your nose and get on with it.
Quoted on August 15, 2012
They were planning some sort of real estate development on the edge of the city - probably on the acres of pasture. They would put up town-houses around the edges, make the center into a square, and along the square put up shops. Rich people would move in, and the Waterhouses and their confederates would control a patch of land that would probably generate more rent than any thousand square miles of Ireland - basically, they would become farmers of rich people.
Quoted on August 15, 2012
Some say that crying is childish. Daniel ... takes a contrary view. Crying loudly is childish, in that it reflects a belief, on the cryer's part, that someone is around to hear the noise, and come a-running to make it all better. Crying in absolute silence, as Daniel does this morning, is the mark of the mature sufferer who no longer nurses, nor is nursed by, any such comfortable delusions.
Quoted on August 15, 2012
Daniel had noticed that there were some families (like the Waterhouses) skilled at presenting a handsome facade to the world, no matter what was really going on; it was all lies, of course, but at least it was a convenience to visitors. But there were other families where the emotional wounds of the participants never healed, never even closed up and scabbed over, and no one even bothered to cover them up - like certain ghastly effigies in Papist churches, with exposed bleeding hearts and gushing stigmata.
Quoted on August 15, 2012
Daniel did not reck who that fellow was, and was too abashed to discover his ignorance ...
Quoted on August 15, 2012
The conversation might not have gone precisely this way. Enoch had the same way with his memories as a ship's master with his rigging - a compulsion to tighten what was slack, mend what was frayed, caulk what leaked, and stow, or throw overboard, what was to no purpose.
Quoted on August 15, 2012