Oooh, both of those sound intriguing. I may have to try the second one first just for the use of the word "teapot-badger". Thank you for the recs!

When I started Quicksilver for the first time, I got a hundred pages in before I walked over to my friend asked him very seriously, "Where is the Shaftoe?" Oh, Jack. ♥

Bobby Shaftoe was my favorite character in Cryptonomicon, but my favorite scenes are probably the one with Laurence Waterhouse and the Marine band and his pipe organ computer. Oh, and the bits about Athena or the human race as descendants of stupendous badasses. XD