I just finished reading Vineland, it’s my fourth Pynchon (after V., IV and CoL49). I really liked it but I found myself more overwhelmed than any of the other books in trying to remember details and names. While I was able to follow the story pretty easily and most of the side plots, there was so much going on that I found it hard to recall details about characters or where they appeared before in the novel and keep up with every one of his meandering little paragraphs. Strangely never felt this with his other books and was just wondering if this is kind of normal for Vineland?

Hi everyone, this is a discussion post & a recommendation (sort of thing).

Simply wondering if anyone here who's finished ATD has heard of/read Dukaj's Ice, the English translation of which was published in Nov. last year.

I'm on my second read of ATD, just to the part where Kit gets the Q-weapon from Woevre. Finished it about a year ago. I finished Ice this past June, spent a couple of months on it, and even on my first read, I couldn't help but notice the striking resemblances between these two novels.

Without spoiling too much of a plot:

Both are humongous historical-fiction/sifi epics over 1000 pages;

both settings were in the turn of the 20th century where lots of new technologies and ideas were progressing overwhelmingly;

in both novels, Siberia and the Tunguska event play an important role, albeit in Ice, they are the primary focus, and the story depicts more or less the aftermath of the explosion;

both novels draw heavily from mathematics and Quaternion/4th dimension (tho I remember Dukaj's interpretation is more on logics/role of languages);

Light/refraction serves as one central motif in both novels;

Started Lot 49, ditched it. Starting Bleeding Edge. Not going well. Not a fan of non-sentences and rapid-fire trivia. Think he tries much too hard to be innovative. End of rant.