David Mitchell - "Slade House"

good read. Finished it in one day. Strange day. It harks back to the Bone Clocks, and where that book fell short, this one was just right. It's a delicate balance, I guess. Just the right amount of repetition. Also, a lot shorter? But his Cloud Atlas was long and that was amazing...
Still a favourite author of mine.

David Mitchell - "Death of the Pugilist, or the Famous Battle of Jacob Burke and Blindman McGraw" and "The Ecstacy of Alfred Russel Wallace"

Two grand shorts by David Mitchell. Amazing how a simple story is given so much depth through the thorough description of its character(s).


   Watching from the crowds, admidst the cheers and curses, there's not a soul that day at Dead Rabbit's Heath that knows what Jacob Burke knows, that the fight is already over. For Blindman's standing and Blindman's fists are still up, and if he's slack in the lip no one can see from what Muscular Jacob Burke has done to his face. They'll know, in breaths they'll know and for years they'll talk about it, but in this half-second between Muscular's knowing and the crowd's knowing, it's as if Muscular has been left alone with a knowledge and an omnipotence only God should have.


   Indeed, they said he had the naiveté of a child: too trusting, too awed by others' greatness to know that he deserved greatness himself. There were hours when he thought: I know nothing. And there were other hours, chiefly at night, waking from dreams he didn't remember, that a different thought came: the idea, that beautiful burning idea, that recasting and refiguring and resculpting of the world, that idea burst forth from me, and me alone.

David Mitchell - "The Bone Clocks"

Very nice read about the life of Holly Sykes, the people around her, and the raging war of Atemporals vs Carnivores, the first century old souls reincarnating, the latter evil Anchorites who siphon off some life'soul stuff from mere mortals to stay alive.

I did enjoy it, and the end was properly bleak - though a deus ex machina tacked on -, but was I truly gripped by the big meta fight? No. The human characters meant more than those Horlogists and Anchorites. Which a book club might reveal to be exactly the point, perhaps.

David Mitchell - "The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet"

(author of that amazing book, "Cloud Atlas")

A Dutch clerk finds himself in Dejima, the only tradingpost of Japan with the outside world, just outside of Nagasaki. There he battles conspiracies, his love for the girl he left at home, the Japanese midwife who is imprisoned into a horror abby, an English dog of War and the very Japanese culture himself.

Again, amazingly written, with every character his own voice, a well-detailed background, an amazing rich narrative.

I wish I could compare it to James Clavell's "Shogun" or the like. Books that showed more of the Orient's thoughts and culture, but had less diverse and complicated characters.

A review of both this book and "Cloud Atlas" complained of the former that the many strange and difficult voices held the reader back from enjoying the story, but I disagree. It said about this book that it shows Mitchell's mastery, but that it is not yet his zenith.

We shall see. I do prefer "Cloud Atlas" to this; it was more diverse, richer and stranger, but those are all personal points of view. From a literary standpoint (whatever that might mean) they are both amazing.