Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell REVIEW

everyone appears to the cameras once again and today I'm reviewing the Cloud Atlas my dad admits allaha book which I'm sure it's going to be tough for me to convey how much I love this book that my friends was what the cool kids call an Anna collusion for the connoisseurs out there when he came along you know joinha pragati bo a doddle in parodies oh I wish I could ascribe it to my Oh at Cloud Atlas but it probably came from my ignorance and awkwardness I've had this book on my shelf for a very long time but the point is that I am a big fan of the movie Cloud Atlas the movie adaptation and I'm going to talk about that a nap tation toward the end of my review the point is I love that movie I watched it in theaters when it came out it's one of my favorite movies from last years and I heard from countless people that the book was so much better and that the book was completely different thing and such and I somehow was convinced that movie had spoiled the best part of the book to me and also some some experiences with the occasional short story by David Mitchell had convinced me it was kind of a tough writer as in tough to understand requiring a lot of effort difficult sort of guy and other people had mentioned Cloud Atlas as being a very challenging book and by all means some parts of it are some parts of it require you to do your homework and to invest a certain effort in order to be understood actually all of it does that all of it has that type of challenge to it what you should not absolutely believe though is that this is a difficult book as in way down my hefty topics or steep deep in its philosophy or in its beliefs or challenging of the level of lexicon I mean it eased all of those things but still for some kind of magical formula Mitchell managed to nail when he was writing his thing it flows simply beautifully and I couldn't really put it down and I only really stopped when I reach and one of the twelve No eleven sections in the book because I it was just so plain also I couldn't stop halfway through any of it sticks different narrative strands and another on a certain level this is very much to look for me I am a sucker for genre fiction of all sorts and for fiction that involves a certain type of excitement as far as the plot is concerned and this is definitely a book like that this is a book the one thing I want you to understand if you're going to take away one thing from this review is that Cloud Atlas is genius as far as its plot is concerned each of the plots of the many different narrative strands that are intertwined in the course of the book is simply too good to be true it's just original and innovating and it's absolutely it follows absolutely in the standards of a specific genre you have a civic voyage you have a thriller span industrial espionage type / military thriller set in the 70s and all of these tales fall very precisely into their genre and at the same time hits you unexpectedly with stuff with a certain twist or with a very quick shift in the way you perceive a character or maybe you were you was thinking you you were thinking something was going to happen but then Mitchell manages to surprise you with some kind of double twist and it's just so unexpected this was so unbelievably good on the level of plot and possibly because of that possibly because the events in this book are so interesting and fascinating and the characters are so compelling and so interesting and some of them are really awful some of them are truly despicable some of them are actually great people all of them are fascinating and you want to learn more about them and you want to know that more deeply possibly because of this all of the heavier stuff the fact that you have up to a certain point to decode the language in each of it of these sections to learn how to speak these different narratives language the fact that the themes of this book concerning the inherent evil of corporation of economics and of capitalism up to a point or at least of a vision of capitalism as I form of social Darwinism a vision of the world in general it is you know the the strong had a certain right to prey on the weak all of that is bound to do humanity towards self-destruction all of these are hefty themes and clown toughness can be truly disturbing at times stomp scenes in Cloud Atlas involve brutal violence and unspeakable things you have to read by yourself but at the same time these the even more disturbing are these threats these thoughts you see wait throughout history the genius thing about this book and notice I'm not really telling you much about how did about all these different strands were there set what they are about because I think if you haven't watched the movie and you're going to experience this thing Manila knowing nothing about it by all means you're going to have a hell of a great time jumping from one section to the next what I want to say is that the book is very good at showing how certain types of thoughts certain types of ideas and visions of the world move throughout one historical moment to the next and under certain contexts can become truly appalling or otherwise can move people to the greatest of acts and to help their fellow women and men the structure of a Cloud Atlas I'm going to spoil you this it's a structure that starts from the past these narrative strands I mention these storylines are all set in very different periods in time they start with the past they start with the 19th century and they end all the way in the far future and then come back all the way to the 19th century what these achieves on the one hand is to show you the inevitability of certain forms of evil throughout history on the other hand first they show you the beauty of the world you live in and of the world of planet Earth really the natural beauty of this world the beauties of civilization and beauties of all that progress and that has achieved but you know the beauties of the world we live in the fact that you can walk down the street relatively safe that people have been convinced with a certain effort of the value of certain ideals of the importance of shedding certain types of and ignorance and at the same time it shows you how temporary all of the days how easily it can it can be taken away if people are not vigilant and if once more the dome and the strong is allowed to prey on the weak because once more power tends to justify itself and to exploit the weak by convincing them they are not even exploited and exploited in the first place and by all means do not make the mistake of thinking Cloud Atlas is a sort of political manual that it has any type of political agenda far from it the thing it does is complicated all of these issues I really like mine is bound to make this sound stuff sound as if it's easy as if gives you the solution on how to be a good human being but that's difficult and it will point at certain types of perversion and evil and at certain types of good but the book itself is very aware that all of those things are not easy to achieve are actually and that evil is strong and corrupts people very easily because that is the way of things and at the same time by showing you how easy it is for the world to slip into corruption and then taking it all back and then moving for me moving past to the present day and then to the past back to the 19th century it makes you feel like giving like doing something to change the world to improve the world even just filming a review on YouTube to tell people a Cutlass is a very good book you should read it because you'll have a great time I know I'm not saying this is going to turn into any kind of I don't know missionary also because missionaries are shown in the book as largely awful people and note I'm sure mr. Mitchell doesn't think missionaries are are are evil people I'm thinking of the historical figure of the missionaries oftentimes being a sort of servant for other imperialistic pursuits and of note but it just makes you feel lucky to be alive and lucky to share in all of the wealth of the world even while having told you for the 600 pages of our shitty the world and reality are really are on their core and this is impossibly once again mystical as as a feet it's this book shouldn't work the way it does and yet it does sticking to its formal structure I am just a sucker for this type of complex structures for these books where different story lines are intertwined with each other and form a sort of constant and recurring pattern male evangelist II I've talked about him in the past it's an italian science fiction writer who writes the most splendid books using this type of different storylines intertwining them with one another giving you alternating chapters following I don't know an Inquisitor with Inquisitor living in the Middle Ages and then a scientist living in the near future and it's just a pity that he isn't translated in English because he's a genius writer if you are Italian by all means read Valeria Vangelis these novels is great think of if on a winter's night a traveler by a tour Calvino to think of a similar structure you can read in English a very a very strict pattern that gives way to the freest of expressions just like with certain poets like Yeats or Frost Robert Frost will use these very strict rhyming and structural conventions and basically show you how free you can be once you use a convention of that type this book uses genres uses genres from science fiction to the dystopic novel to adventure fiction to whatever to show you how free you can be once you move inside a convention such as that of a genre and even just noticing how each of these six different story lines tap into the next and are all interconnected with one another and you find these phrases that are repeated or these images that come from a section to the next and all of these Irian sinister sometimes beautiful references cross-referencing between all of these if you are that type of reader if you like to read attentively and you like this type of intricate plots which means you probably have read some post modernism post modernist fiction tends to have lots of those in the references and everything is connected Indian sort of reflection you're going to have a hell of a lot of lovely time with Cloud Atlas but these once more it's not a chore ain't built for academics and English literature students I'm sure my mum would enjoy this book I'm sure your mum will enjoy the book too not that I am implying I am acquainted with your mother when it comes to its language loud applause performs another one of its feats that shouldn't really work but somehow do masterfully which is that it teaches you how to read it as you move along this book is written in a varieties once more of styles and genres and registers and even in some invented futuristic language that is English but at the same time isn't and in that sense it may be a little bit tough to read at first when you first experience one of these storylines but it isn't not nearly as difficult as some other stuff you find around that plays with these same idea for instance I am a fan I'm a fan of the familiar series by Marc de Nevsky which is written of several different intertwined storylines each one using a different register and style but cracking the code in the familiar while not impossible at all and actually very rewarding and I'm I'm saying this as someone who is at cracking code story if I read this book and this series you can read it with your eyes closed or you know probably not but you can easily crack the code canal that Plus is a breeze in comparison not because it's not because it's code is any less genius but just because it flows so beautifully and because once again that it made shell engineer the type of code the type of linguistic game which is entertaining to decode it's entertaining to learn the language the stories told ruin you're going to learn about these words as you read through and at the same time it's challenging and it keeps you engaged but it never frustrates you it never got to the point where I couldn't understand what was going on never at all and once more if I could crack this book you're going to breeze through it and please keep in mind that you do not and all we need to learn how to read the more shall nourish and futuristic ation of storylines in the future even the one set in our current times told by an old Englishman the gospel your deal of timid Cavendish you'll need to sort of decoded and to understand he's old-school English slang and he's waste / peculiar ways of phrasing x' and all these references to old movies and classic literature the fun just never stops with ground Atlas the two books I want to compare called Atlas - even more than an electic is the familiar are the shell of the torturer by Gene Wolfe a classic of science fiction where the genius feat is that it is written in a futuristic language that is filled with obscure lexicon and that as you learn basically you learn the language of this world and you learn how to build this world how to create to imagine this world in your mind as you become acquainted with the narrator's language and with this lexicon and with this bizarre turns Cloud Atlas works in many ways in a similar way especially in its futuristic storylines and also to Mason and Nixon by Thomas Pynchon this is for obvious reasons especially true of the first storyline set in the 19th century Mason and Dixon - is set between the 18th and 19th cent maybe all only in the 18th century I have to check that but anyway it is written by pension in a style that imitates the style of classic English writers such as Dafoe in order to convey the story of these 18th century explorers and astronomers in as if it were written in the time but of course being written by a postmodern writer writing in the 80s and 90s some say already in the 70s food for thought anyway writing today you can find certain things and certain reflections that maybe clash with what would have been what characters would have thought in a genuine 19th century 18th century narrative and that is not jarring at all that is the fun of it it's the fun of reading a narrative you know it's fabricated and decoding it and looking at this at this ancient artifact from yesterday and then reflecting in general on the way history is constructed on the way if any of the artifacts are genuine artifacts from the past we approach nowadays can be approached as they were created in the past and on all of those reflections on if historiography you are probably familiar with if you deal with post dealt with post modernism at any time in your life but basically go you know you're only always constructing with the past through your present-day perspective but that's complicated stuff the last thing I want to say about this book is the movie the movie adaptation the movie adaptation of Colossus in my opinion is great it's absolutely fine I do not think at all that the movie is so on comparable to the book of course the book is genius is bringing I if I haven't stated this enough it's a masterpiece I I can't believe that books these good exists but the movie 2 is great and I still love it and I've watched it several times and I think I'll watch it again in the future and yes sure they changed some of the plot lines and they simplified maybe a certain ones they altered one or two of the story lines in significant ways but these to me seems very much like an Anna unadaptable kind of book because of the way it's so bound to the language is used to create it and construct it and the way they adopted it I thought was genius let me know what you think about cloud that first movie was notably about Carla lost the book in the comments below I apologize for a review that was even more sprawling than usual and even more heavy pretty thing like I didn't really like the book but they really liked the book and I'm sure you have a lovely time with it I should stop saying lovely it's a horrible word you'll have a great time with mother clown topless Thea in a second you're going to find links on screen to videos I even filmed Mason and Dixon probably and also head of the torturer and I will see you in the next video thank you for watching guys bye guys [Music]

Channel: TheBookchemist

Views: 5,354

Rating: 4.9821429 out of 5

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Id: _cxcQX0E164

Length: 17min 34sec (1054 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 07 2018