I could read Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon over and over. I know because that’s what I’m doing. I’ve read it front to back twice, and the triple storyline makes it easy to dip in and out of a particular plot.
Why Cryptonomicon? I’m not sure. There are virtually no female characters–then again, that’s never been a requirement for my reading. Is it the World War II setting? The other World War II setting? The contemporary (well, as of when it was written) treasure-hunting? One thing is certain: it’s not the math. I may have taken calculus in high school, but I am not a mathematician. It’s not that I’m bad at it, but I do lack confidence. Also interest. As I’ve learned a little more about math, I see why other people love it–but the real-world applications of higher-level math were not emphasized in the classes I took, possibly because some of those applications didn’t exist then.
But back to Cryptonomicon: while it is full of math, that’s not essential to the story (well, it is, but you can understand the story without understanding the math). It’s a rollicking good time, full of adventure, excitement, profanity, lust, good, evil, and so on. And I can’t stop reading it.