Cloud Atlas.....

[BaconAndAvocado]

Just started this after loads of rave reviews from friends.

Finding it quite a challenging read, should I persevere?

I would like to kindly ask all who have fully read and not appreciated Cloud Atlas to read through the short thread I linked to and see what they have missed

i kept going with it to the bitter end - it was a while ago now - cant remember it very well but i thought it was clever.

Onto the second bit of the book, still very challenging but will definitely keep persevering !

Did you spot the repeated and utterly inappropriate grammatical mistake that the main character in the first part keeps making, which suggests that it's the author himself who can't write properly (and that sub-editors are useless)?

I loved it, and I have given up on loads of others.

I gave up on it after about 30 pages.

I really liked it, wasn't too keen on the Luisa Rey chapter but particularly loved Orison of Sonmi.

Jkklpu - which do you mean?

I'd like to hear about this repeated grammatical mistake, too.

Me too,normally pick up on that sort of thing,certainly don't remember that.

Surely if its a mistake repeated by one character, it could be part of their, erm, character? It is a diary after all...

Pronoun trouble - keeps using "I" when it should be "me". Had it been in the futuristic section, it could have been an indication that this was a language evolution; but it was in the mouth of a character whose education would have meant that he would have spoken correctly. Very sloppy and really irritating.

Examples, please.

Yes I'd be interested in hearing the examples. I've had a flick through Letters from zedelghem but couldn't find anthing or did you mean in Adam Ewing's diary.

Started this a few months ago, but stopped after 10 pages. Picked it up again on holiday last week - riveted so far, though madly looking for narrative/thematic clues as I go.

Really enjoying it now, halfway into Zedelghem part and like I've arrived on terra firma, in a literary kinda way

Knew you'd enjoy this chapter (it's one of my favourites). If you like thrillers the next chapter is good too

Each story/testimony in Cloud Atlas is written in a different literary genre and David Mitchell makes it look so easy.

Ooh,goodie, I love thrillers! And yes David Mitchell is quite outstanding!

I have retread an Orison of Somni many, many times. Love it.

Phew! I'm nearing the end now and really glad I didn't give up on it!

My favourite stories have been Timothy Cavendish and Luisa Rey.

Going to see the film this week, hope they haven't slaughtered it.....

I found it a bit of a plod but I tend to get annoyed with multi-stranded books (always like one strand better). I loved his Number 9 dream though.

approach it like six small books that happen to all be in wrapper.. although having done that i then waited for them all to collide a the end and make sense, not sure they did.. left a bit unsatisfied or maybe just its too clever. interested to see how the film deals with that.

If you thought the book doesn't make sense, the film is unlikely to help. At least you know the stories, though. God help people who go to see that three-hour film without having read the book.

loved the individual parts, but think the book as a whole was lost on me..

Did you not think the stories connected?