Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - Book Review

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Patience’s design flaw became obvious for the first time in my life: the outcome is decided not during the course of play but when the cards are shuffled, before the game even begins. How pointless is that? - Timothy Cavendish

Is this actually a design flaw? Or is it Karma?

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There are thousands of reviews written on this book that will tell you how good or bad it is.

Loving or hating the book. Was this part decided before too? It is anyway inconsequential.

The hunger for power makes us lose our power over the hunger.

History repeats, mistakes duplicate, learning and unlearning happens.

The cycle of carbon to carbon transformation called as life goes on.

Will we ever learn? We'll never learn? Two sides of the same transparent coin.

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The first half of the book introduces you to people. The second half (the better half) tells you that circumstances change, people don't.

Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal
There’s not even room enough to be anywhere
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there
...
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from
- Not Dark Yet by Bob Dylan

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Frobisher was a wunderkind, he died just as he got going…

Cloud Atlas Sextet holds my life, is my life, now I’m a spent firework; but at least I’ve been a firework. - Robert Frobisher

Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an’ tho’ a cloud’s shape nor hue nor size don’t stay the same, it’s still a cloud an’ so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud’s blowed from or who the soul’ll be ’morrow? Only Sonmi the east an’ the west an’the compass an’ the atlas, yay, only the atlas o’ clouds. - Zachary

Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides… I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life’s voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn’t I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds. - Timothy Cavendish

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I loved The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. I quite liked Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After and Letters from Zedelghem. The others were threads that weaved the fabric of time spanning centuries, back and forth.

We just flew on the magic carpet ride.

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Mr. David Mitchell, I thank you for a lovely book that I will remember, every once in a while...

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