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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
medium-paced
Great book! Each of the six stories were as if they really were written by separate authors, which just shows David Mitchell's talent with language.
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Couldn't do it ... couldn't get past page 50 or so. I found the writing style really hard to read and not at all engaging.
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
(4,75) Almost too grand and epic to fully comprehend but still David Mitchell wrote Cloud Atlas with such uncompromising and clear vision that, even if it might feel like a challenge to start reading it, the entire matryoshka doll reading-experience will be worth it in the end. I must admit that reading this can be an incredibly daunting task. Since my viewing of the film adaptation happened ages ago and some of the stories that make up Cloud Atlas are so dense, full of characters, and full of complex prose (especially the 1800's ship journal and post-apocalyptic, hyperneo English were tough reads), that it's hard to wrap your head around everything that happens and, more over, how everything connects and forms meaning throughout the book. But as the middle point is reached and one goes back in time again thematics become clearer and clearer. What is most memorable in the latter half of the book is how wonderful its characters voice the novel's main concern with the unrelenting powers that be, the unstoppable flow of time, and the inescapable cyclical nature of it all (for reference see some of my favourite quotations below). I don't think I'll pick up a book as challenging as this in a while, but the absolute trip it is to be whirled across time and place, with characters you love and hate and love to hate, is what makes reading stuff like this so much fun!
"[...] we cross, criss-cross, and recross our old tracks like figure skaters." - Timothy Cavendish.
"What if trying to avoid the future is what triggers it all?" - Luisa Rey
"'[...] He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean.'
Yet what is an ocean but a multitude of drops?" - Adam Ewing
"[...] we cross, criss-cross, and recross our old tracks like figure skaters." - Timothy Cavendish.
"What if trying to avoid the future is what triggers it all?" - Luisa Rey
"'[...] He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean.'
Yet what is an ocean but a multitude of drops?" - Adam Ewing
I had a feeling the entire time I read this book I had read it before but it was written by a different author and it was much better. But overall it was a very good book.
funny
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Just a great read, not sure I got all the meaning but I became engrossed in each story.