292
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #88,764 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★★
This is not about the book, but about the Kindle edition
I give the book 5 stars, as I love the style & the humour. What I give 1 star is the Kindle edition compared to the printed book. Did this book not exist as an electronic file prior to the Kindle version? I find that hard to belive, but nevertheless, Amazon must have thought so because the Kindle edition has very obviously been scanned & OCR'd from the printed page, and the OCR software they used must have come from the same year when Stephenson wrote the book longhand on paper, apparently.
There are many, many OCR errors in the text, particularly misinterpretation of rn as m, which often makes non-words, or, worse, makes actual words which make no sense, or, even worse, makes actual words that change the meaning of a sentence and bring your reading to a grinding halt.
Amazon; if you must OCR books to Kindle, spare a few hours to proof-read them. This is my first bad Kindle experience. Very amateur electronic publishing job.
November 2010 · Kindle Store · verified purchase