The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie

    This is Rushdie at his most freeform-poetic. It's a long ride through a rewrite of rock history showcasing the rise and fall of the supergroup VTO, headed by the audacious musicians Ormus Cama and Vina Apsara. Familiar to Rushdie's novels is the density of material, disengagement from reality, complex characters, and what-the-fuck witticism. This one stands out in my mind as having the best quick sentences out of any of his books, placed perfectly at the end of meticulously brilliant paragraphs. As a writer it's probably his best work, but the story itself isn't as captivating as some of his others. Part of my issue with this book, and all of his books really, is that none of the characters were emotionally engaging (even when he decides to cast a morally sound, unselfish character, something hideous always happens to them). Ormus and Vina's quirky psychoses did keep the pages turning for me, yet their romance was really dry and I didn't buy into it. He writes about love like it were lust and I think he confuses the two, so I'm more inclined to recommend this to sex addicts (God help you!) than to romance fans. The narrator's secular cynicism was mildly annoying, but I appreciated all his artistic speculations during the breakdowns of reality. Oh, and Rushdie takes an implicit shot at Madonna for some reason... Not that that isn't amusing. 

Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

I can see why Walt Whitman is often cited as the father of American poetry. His poems devote an abnormal amount of patriotic support for the American way, which I think is uncommon among poets. But there's are also an astounding array of insights on philosophy, the soul, and the nature of things. I didn't think he was all that arrogant, he was just indulging in the Unity of All, a transcendent state of mind that makes it prone to appearing superior to the misunderstood. Also uncommon among writers is his ability to engage the reader into his poems (awkwardly he'll even "grope" you through the pages a few times). I highly admire his more mystical poems, some of which are favorites of mine that I've highlighted in the Table of Contents: 

 

Song Of Myself (A genuine classic. Really amazing. Everyone needs to read this.) 

One Hour to Madness & Joy 

Facing West from California's Shores 

Out Of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 

Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Depths 

Bivouac On a Mountain Side 

Passage To India 

Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling 

The Mystic Trumpeter 

Pensive On Her Dead Gazing 

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

This is a masterpiece of staggering genius, and one of the best books I've ever read. There are six nested stories in the novel and each of them follow six separate lives of a reincarnated soul(s?) whose archetypal drive is to rebel against the powers that be. David Mitchell uses an impressive repertoire of styles to distinguish each of these lives, from the grammatically elitist English of The Pacific Journal Of Adam Ewing to Zachry’s wild southern U.S. slang-uage in Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rthin’ After. As far as genres are concerned, there’s a little something for everyone, including the funny and entertaining Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish and the dystopian-sci-fi-mystery-thriller An Orison of Sonmi-451. But I’ve never read anything quite like the stream-of-consciousness tragic comedy Letters from Zeleghem, my favorite of the stories. The dark romance between the quirky musician Robert Frobischer and Eva the tease won my heart. Sloosha’s Crossin’ was another unique and beautiful tale set in post-apocalyptic Hawaii, my second favorite. The story I haven’t mentioned, The Luisa Rey Mystery, is by no means weak due its stellar plot, but the narrative is formulaic and easy to understand, so I found it the least intriguing but it’s probably the most accessible to other readers. 

Underlying all this abstraction, Cloud Atlas leaves these intricacies and clues scattered about that relate each story with one another sequentially. After reading this great quote from Sloosha’s Crossin’ it all came together: “I watched clouds awobbly from the floor o’ that kayak. 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 Somni the east an’ the west an’ the compass an’ the atlas, yay, only the atlas o’ clouds.” How true n’deed, n’ how relev’nt to th’ scope o' th' novel. It did seem to me that the idiosyncrasies in personalities carried through each story, and even multiple ones too. With all the implicit romances it seems like there might have been reincarnated star-crossed soul mates in each tale (I made a chart of all the relationships because I was so intrigued by them, see below). Maybe I think too much, but this book's Escheresque complexity absolutely floored me, and I’d recommend it to anyone. 

 

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SPOILER ALERT: This is for anyone interested in my soul mate theory. Autua is Robert Frobischer is Isaac Saachs is Timothy Cavendish is Hae Joo is Zachry. Adam Ewing is Eva is Luisa Rey is (Nurse Noakes?) is Snomi-451 is Meronym. The chronological "math" adds up, the behaviorism of them are similar, and there's an implicit romance between each, except for the Cavendish story, which is the only one that could make me dubious.