In the Beginning...Was the Command Line, by Neal Stephenson

This is one of my "stretch" books in science/math--you know, not an English teacher-y book. Every once in awhile I like to dabble in an elegant universe, take a walk with Stephen Hawking, try my hand at a few differential equations--but not usually. Just every once in awhile. So this was on the summer senior reading list, and I just grabbed it at the library impulsively.

I read 45 pages. That was enough.

The writing is perfectly adequate; the author has a pleasing vocabulary. But after awhile, the essays all seemed to be about the same. They're mostly about Mac vs. PC. I followed most of the jargon--I know what GUIs are, I've programmed in basic (my kid brother and I used to spend hours typing in lines of code at the DOS prompt on our ancient IBM computer so that a red flashing light would blink across the screen for half a second, dazzling us with our own brilliance), and I kind of understand what OSs do; so I thought, "hey, I can read this book, and maybe even learn a little bit more about computer-geek culture." But it just reaffirmed what I already knew--there's a reason why I'm not a computer geek, and that's because a) it's not that fun; and b) the writers aren't as gritty.

Sorry, knowledgeable author-man. I'm sure this book is really interesting to some people (specifically, those people who got really excited when Windows NT came out, for example). And I liked reading about the old punch-card computer systems, and it also made me realize there are valid points for preferring Macs to PCs or vice-versa (still don't understand that Linux/Unix think sufficiently, though).

But honestly? I'd rather be reading Dickens.