[From now on, I’ll be recording and blogging my reading history using All Consuming.]

One of the books recommended before I left Australia earlier this year was David Mitchell’s first novel, Ghostwritten. The narratives making up the story traveled through Japan, China, Mongolia, Russia and paralleled the places I was visiting. I would have loved the book anyway, but it felt even more special to be reading about a place having just seen it, smelt it and felt it.

Whilst in Amsterdam last week, I took advantage of an amazing bookstore there and bought Cloud Atlas, Mitchell’s third novel. As with Ghostwritten, it took a while to get used to the different textures used in the novel, but once my reading adjusted, the different pieces of the book fitted together quite cleverly.

I connected most with the story An Orison of Sonmi~451 a dystopia of genetically engineered slaves, forced consumerism and widespread environmental devastation. There’s nothing quite like a well written tale of a bleak future to make me feel quite hopeless about what’s going on in the present, so maybe that explains why I’m currently feeling a bit gloomy.

Anxiety about the future and things I can’t control aside, Cloud Atlas was an amazing book.