Cryptonomicon
by Neal Stephenson
An admission: Cryptonomicon is huge. Intimidatingly so. But having read it once, for some reason I find that whenever I reread it (and I have, several times-- a real claim to fame for a nine-hundred page book!), I breeze through.
Cryptonomicon is three books in one: the modern day business, computer science, and adventure thriller, the butch, haiku-writing World War II soldier, and the absentminded World War II codebreaker. The three tie into one another, but can at the same time nearly be read on their own. One of the big attractions (for me, at least!) of Stephenson's writing is his tangents; in the middle of the action, he'll suddenly go off on a pages-long description of an interesting problem in cryptography or organ mechanics. I can't believe how much I learned reading this book!
Of course, one of Stephenson's recurring flaws is that his stories get exponentially more improbable as they go on. The book starts off reasonably and believably; as events got increasingly absurd, my suspension of belief hung on gamely. But by the last quarter of the book, as the codebreaker chronicles the cultural quirks of the residents of a non-existent British isle and the businessmen trek through impenetrable jungle chased by foes worthy of Indiana Jones, it was just a little too much to take.
Overall, Cryptonomicon is long, but occasionally hilarious and honestly interesting.