Bootstrap’d The Misadventures of Starting a Company

Cryptonomicon23:13:30

I don’t read a lot of books.

Most of the books I have read are technical manuals, programming books, science textbooks, and math textbooks. I really enjoy learning, and there’s nothing like a good physical book to teach me. I don’t usually like to read fiction because in my mind it seems like my time would be better spent learning something else. I also don’t read a lot of non-fiction because most non-fiction texts are based on history, a subject I sorely neglected in favor of math and science.

I pride myself in being a pretty big nerd, but I will risk losing major nerd points by openly admitting that I have not read nearly any of the essentially nerdy SciFi books that all nerds are assumed to have read. The only ones I can think of straight away that I have read are Ender’s Game and Watchmen. I read Ender’s Game about 9 years ago, and I honestly enjoyed it a lot. I meant to read the rest of the series, but I never made time for it. I just read Watchmen this year right before the movie came out. I also really enjoyed reading that (along with the movie, which did a great job staying true to the source).

So, clearly I can enjoy reading fiction, it’s just that I don’t take time to do it. I think it stems from being forced to read countless books in school, most of which I did not enjoy (there were a few exceptions – Catcher in the Rye being the most notable one). I kind of got turned off by the idea of investing a lot of time in something I might not like.

About a month ago, I took a trip to California and stayed with my aunt, uncle, and three cousins. My uncle has recently started a company of his own (with a few partners). He is a brilliant business man, and I have a lot of respect for his insights.

My uncle, one of my cousins, and I took a trip to a bookstore. I wanted to get a book about Scala (a semi-new programming language).  While I perused the Programming section, my uncle directed my cousin over to the Children’s Fantasy section (which was adjacent to the Science Fiction section). After discovering that they did not have my book in stock, I wandered over to meet my uncle. He was walking up and down the SciFi aisle pointing out to his son the books he had read and how great they were. This left me a little confused. My uncle is a History major and works in the finance industry. When (and more importantly, why?!) had he read all of these SciFi books? I never quite got the answer because before I could ask, he was quizzing me on the books that I had read (incidentally, he had lent me that copy of Ender’s Game I read). After about my fifth embarrassed reply of “No” to his “Have you read … ?” questions, he gave me the familiar incredulous glance I have come to expect from fellow nerds who learn my dirty little secret.

“You really should read these books!”

For some reason, this assertion really struck a chord with me. If he, a very busy (and successful) businessman, could make the time to read all of these classics, then so should I. It was at that point that I decided to start then and there. I bought two books: Foundation by Isaac Asimov, and Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

Foundation was at my uncle’s suggestion, and Cryptonomicon I picked of my own choosing. I am a huge cryptography nut, and I had heard of Cryptonomicon several times since its release and thought now is when I would finally read it.

Each day since I started out on my own, I have forced myself to take one or two ten-minute breaks and read a few pages. So far I am up to page 215 (out of 1100 or so), and (surprise!) I am really enjoying it. There is a big focus on World War II era cryptography, which is very cool because the Enigma machine was something of great interest to me, and I have done lots of research on it out of pure curiosity. There is also a story line about two guys starting their own company in the information technology business. This was a happy coincidence, and it has been fun to follow along with their story line as my days progress.

In the end, will my new found desire to read more books be worth my time? I do think so, though I’m not quite sure why yet. If nothing else, it has been nice to take a couple short breaks during the day to let my mind concentrate on something else, if only for a short while.

Oh, and even though I haven’t finished it yet, I highly recommend Cryptonomicon.

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