By the way, I just remembered I wanted to recommend Cryptonomicon to y'all - I read it on the beach and really enjoyed it.

The blurb says it's three books rolled into one - a spy novel, a war novel and some tech stuff thrown into the mix and I totally agree with the blurb. And although I do not usually like spy and war novels I thought they never went too far into their respective fields to not be enjoyable. It's basically three separate stories that are intertwined somehow - at the beginning you're not sure how exactly, but the stories are merged at the end. I like that.

Also, I thought the story would be bogged down by a lot of crypto stuff; you know, formulas and the like. But while those are incorporated, they're usually explained so well that even I would get them and if not you can skip them without any further detriment to the story (I thought at least). But then again I am somewhat interested in crypto stuff and bought Enigma by Robert Harris (of Fatherland fame, a great novel BTW) which really sucked because there was absolutely NO crypto stuff in it which I considered cheating. Boo.