Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas is my first Kindle book. 

So before I write about the book, a bit about the experience. Over last couple of months there has been a lot of travel in my work. Thanks to dear S I had Kindle to give me company :) Though while travelling, I rarely get a chance to read, I asked S for a book to have a fall back (nothing more boring than having to travel alone without a book!). 

The reason it was Cloud Atlas was because when waiting for our flight from Rome, I noticed the couple ahead of us in the queue reading Cloud Atlas (husband) and Capital (wife). It connected to some vague memory in my brain reminding me that I had once thought of reading this book. One of the first Amazon reviews I read for the book said not too read too much about the book before reading it & enjoy the stories as they unfold. So I took the advice and didn't research any further.

The book was loaded on Kindle and lay there unread for quite a few weeks. Then on one of those trains back home where I was alone, I started reading it. The first few pages I admit, I read rather mechanically - just for the sake of reading. But then as a couple of characters began to emerge, I got used to reading the book. 

The book is written across different time periods in history & future of human kind. It may throw you off for sometime and may seem a bit all over the place.  However, there is something unique in each part of the books which keeps you glued on to discover more. I wonder if each of the 6 stories have actually got potential to be expanded into books in their own right!!

Confession - the links between various stories are not abundantly evident (or at least to me). A couple of stories actually refer characters by name and it is clear that you have read about this person in another part of the book but what is their role is still difficult to gauge. Only when I completed reading the book I did some Internet search on it - I wanted to know what had I missed. Reading some of the reviews made the hints clearer. 

Now that I have read the book and have read its reviews the least I can say is Cloud Atlas is a challenging book. It expects its readers to pay attention to the details and then sweat themselves out in figuring the connections! It is not a casual read which would make sense even if you skip pages or read half asleep. Every line could be as critical as next!

So may be it was a wrong choice for travel/part time reading but then I don't know when would I ever pick up a book to play the tiring game of 'so what did he mean by that...' with the author!