What is the book? I've been incognito for a while...but would like to be at least a belated member than none at all.

Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. (Note: there's another Cloud Atlas.)

Book for next month is Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Holy God, I read the wrong Cloud Atlas. Carry on, I'll be watching football.

Rainbaby, you're not alone. Maybe it's the usernames?

How was the Other Cloud Atlas?

sorry all--i had to bring work home, so am behind.

I'll be posting an official thread late tonight.

Can I propose that the next book club thread posting be announced ahead of time, so we can all be reading it at once?

I think we should hold off till tomorrow. 5pm EST? I have an engagement at 2pm, and I don't want to ruin people's Sunday night TV.

The other The Cloud Atlas was not very good. It had potential, being about the Japanese ballon bombing of North America during WWII, but the plot was excessively labored; it depended too much on overly contrived characters and made inappropriate digressions into magical realism when the author got too lazy to deal with the complex situations he set up; and worst of all, relied on "magical minorities" to resolve complex moral issues.

A so-so book that could have been a good one.

As a result of that canard, I'm only at the turning point of the real Cloud Atlas and have just begun to get a hint of the mid-book pivot. Not having got there yet, I'm disappointed that I won't be much use in the ensuing discussion.

On the bright side, I have almost completed this weeks mad-scientist project: the corpse grinder -- adding a motor to my sister's big hand-cranked sausage-making meat grinder. It should be done tomorrow and enormous quantities of sausage are now visible on the event horizon. In other food-related news, this year's harvest of hard cider has turned out very well. The King cider is the best ever: rich, full bodied and appley. The Carmin DeSanta is more tart and not as complex.

balloon

Tomorrow's better for me too--still working : (

Amberglow: would you post the questions in advance and we'll do one a day (with the questions in the wiki and links to each day's thread)?

*stalling for time to finish the book*

I completely agree with warbaby's assesment of THE Cloud Atlas.

So listen to him in the real discussion, y'all.