Once upon a time author Joe Hill started the Big Read Along. We were going to read Cloud Atlas and discuss it via twitter and Joe's website. He spoke very highly of this book, and I was excited to read it. Well, that was back in September. Joe Hill's website was down for the count for about a month. Some people still read the book on time and posted to twitter (#BigReadAlong). Joe finished the book in a weekend (which seems odd for the person leading the book club...) and the Big Read Along was lost. Well, I started the book when the read along began, and I was adamant that I finish it. 

I just finished it. 

I can safely say, this book was really hard (for me) to read. I don't read like most people, and the reasons I found it difficult to read are not the reasons I think other people would find it difficult to read. I knew nothing about this book when I started reading it, and I'm fairly certain I still don't know anything about the book. I didn't even look at the table of contents, which looking back, might have helped. 

I really want to research and find answers to my questions, but I decided I would write my review before I started reading other people's ideas on the book. 

Normally, I would tell you the synopsis of the book, but this is difficult to do without giving a lot away. The book consists of 7 stories. There are 6 stories of individuals and then the entire book as a story. The reason I make this distinction is because at the end, you have to step back and look at the whole book as it is woven together. 

There were many times when I exclaimed what a genius David Mitchell is (my husband can attest to these exclamations). He did things with this story that were brilliant and wonderful, but it was still a difficult story to read. 

Each of the 6 stories revolves around one person: 
1. Adam Ewing
2. Robert Frobisher
3. Luisa Rey
4. Timothy Cavendish
5. Sonmi 451
6. Meronym

Each of the stories is from a different time. Adam Ewing is the earliest and his story is a couple centuries earlier than our present. I'm going to write my review on the individual stories and then on the overall story. 

1. Adam Ewing

This is a difficult place to start the story, not because of Ewing's story, but because the writing is not what one would expect to read. Instead of a lot of direction and dialogue in dialect, it is Ewing's journal entries so the entire thing is written in the speech of an educated man from San Francisco in the 1840's give or take. There is not a lot of unknown speech, but there is a lot of personal conviction. It's something that I love and hate about Ewing's story. I love how well Mitchell wrote this section. I love reading about it from Ewing's point of view. I love his language use. I think it was really well written, but it's dry. I finished this section (which ends midsentence) and thought, "Where is this story going?" 

2. Robert Frobisher

I really disliked this portion of the story. I think this is mainly because music isn't my favorite thing to read about. I never liked Frobisher, but I don't know if you're supposed to. This section is written as letters from Robert Frobisher to Rufus Sixsmith. Again, you don't have the advantage of copping out on the speech because the whole thing is written from Frobisher's point of view. One thing I absolutely adored is how well Mitchell changed voices from Ewing to Frobisher. We're talking two completely different time periods (this being written from the 1930's) and he captured the speaking and writing style of both. Color me impressed! I still don't like Frobisher, but I can't deny the talent of Mitchell's writing. 


3. Luisa Rey

Luisa's story was much easier to read. It resembled the murder novels we read today. Luisa is a reporter and she is trying to get to the truth. I didn't love this story. It was well written and clever. It helps you connect to other parts of the story. It is not overly memorable. It is written from the third person which was unexpected. I wasn't overly impressed with this portion of the story. 

I need to take a brief moment and let you know that it took me two months to get to this point. I was determined to finish the book, but this point in the story is only about 30% into the book. If the storied continued like this, I wasn't going to finish it. Then Mitchell introduced...

4. Timothy Cavendish


The beginning of Cavendish's story is average. It's just a regular guy who works in publishing and is trying to make some money. Unfortunately, the money he tries to make "belongs" to some tough customers. Once Cavendish makes a daring escape, his story starts getting really interesting. This is where I got hooked. I loved his story, but it ended too soon. It was told as a recollection (first person past). Once again, Mitchell has had to change his writing language to match the time period (present). 

5. Sonmi 451


This is told like an interview between an Archivist and a Fabricant (I guess we would see this as a sort of AI... but there is more to this story). The language used in this part of the story imagines a world that is a Corpocracy (ruled by the corporations). Mitchell's imagining of the language is nothing short of amazing. I fell in love with his ability to create and mimic dialect and speech over vast differences in time (this story takes place in 2144... I think). Instead of movies like we have today, they are called Disneys. Instead of coffee that we drink, it is all referred to as starbuck. In a world where the corporations have the control, I can totally imagine they would hold monopolies on words. Shoes are now called nikes. Cigarettes are now called marlboros. [brief aside: When I was growing up and my mom wanted me to grab a plastic bag, she would always call it a walmart bag. Being the smart alec that I was, I would return and tell her we were all out of walmart bags, would a kmart bag suffice?] Genius. It's one thing to come up with a future world in your head, but it's a totally different ballgame to come up with a language to match it. Kudos. 

6. Meronym


Every other story in this book gets two chapters. This one only has the one. This was by far my favorite chapter. If there was a book written like this, I would gladly seek it out and read it. When I describe the dialect to people I ask them if they've seen Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. 

I absolutely love it when people are clever enough to pull off speech like this. I am 100% amazed at Mitchell for not only having his characters speak like this, but he wrote it down. Seeing speech like this in text form is daunting. I find it's actually easier to read it out loud than it is to read it in your head... It's also more fun. The story he tells is one of superstition, action, danger, daring escapes, and hidden treasures. This is by far my favorite. I wish this story could have gone on for the whole book, but that would defeat the point of the book.   

Overall:


I am so impressed with Mitchell's writing abilities that I want everyone to read this book and marvel with me. The problem with this is that not everyone has the same interest in language that I do. For someone who is more into music, they might like the nuances and humor of the Frobisher chapter more than I did. I will say this, once you finish it, the book makes more sense. It still doesn't make full sense, but it makes more sense. I look forward to doing more research on it and finding all the things I missed. I don't know if I could get myself to wade through the first third of the book to get to the good stuff again, but that is based on my interests. I can totally see other people loving the first few chapters and hating the middle ones. This is a book for everyone, but not all of the book is for everyone... just parts. It's worth a read, but I am not going to tell everyone they need to read it. I'd be interested to find out which parts interested the other readers out there. If you find this review and have read the book, please leave your thoughts in the comment section!

I have been on an unexpected kick lately. I’ve been getting into the homesteading movement and reading a lot of stuff about prepping. For those of you that don’t know what I’m talking about, prepping is when people have a plan and materials set aside in case something bad happens. This could be anything from a natural disaster (here in Houston our concern is hurricanes), national shortages, losing electricity or water for weeks at a time, war, disaster, economic collapse, aliens, super volcanoes, EMP’s etc. It doesn’t matter what you are preparing for, the point is that you believe you are prepared. That being said, if mankind lost electricity for more than a month, it would be absolutely catastrophic. My goal is to be able to live off the grid. No electricity. It’s not that we wouldn’t have access to electricity, but we would know how to live without it. We would know how to plant vegetables that would continue to grow through the winter, we would know how to find and filter water, and we would know how to hunt and process game.

I promise this is getting to the book soon. My sister, who has similar but differently focused interest in this stuff, recommended a book to me. It’s about an area of the US that suffers from an EMP. An EMP is an electromagnetic pulse. If one of those hit your house, anything with a computer/motherboard would be rendered useless. If one were to hit your town, this would include any plane, train, boat or automobile that has a computer built into it. Most EMP’s would be limited to a specific area and wouldn’t be enough to shut off a house or a town for that matter. If a nuclear weapon were to be detonated in the atmosphere, it could (I’m not overly versed on the science of this) cause an EMP that would cover several hundred miles. If a series of these went off over the US, it would put this country into the Dark Ages. It wouldn’t just set us back a hundred years, it would set us back to a time before people knew how to make soap. Strange reference, I know. It makes sense though, think about all the times you wash your hands (or should wash your hands) in a day. The soap would run out pretty fast and disease and infection would spread far more quickly than it does now. It would be millions of people who don’t know how to grow or preserve food. It would be a bunch of people who would kill for their next meal instead. It would be devastating. Now, I’m not saying that everyone needs to start preparing for an EMP. That is what happens in the book. There was also a show called “Jericho” that was on a few years ago about an EMP and a town (Jericho) in Kansas trying to survive. It’s a good show. I recommend it, but I haven’t actually finished watching it yet.

This book, “One Second After”, is about a man with a military history who is now a history professor at a small private school in North Carolina. The school is situated in the mountains, not far from Asheville. The man, John, has two daughters. One of the daughters is a Type One Diabetic. Now, put that information I gave you about an EMP to work with what I just told you. All major transport systems are down, all manufacturing systems are down, all refrigerators are down. There is ample food in the growing regions of the US, but how do you get it across the country when you don’t have the vehicles to do so? Also, the roads are probably littered with cars that would have to be moved. The insulin for a diabetic would no longer be produced or available. There would be no place to store it and the life of the medicine would decrease.

I’m telling you a lot about the story, but there is a lot about this story that I’m not telling you. There is a portion of the book that was pretty boring to read, but if you’re interested in this from a sociological point of view, then it’s pretty decent for that. Now onto my review.

I really enjoy writing. I hate rereading what I have written because it’s worded in a way that people don’t speak. That’s how this guy writes. There are a lot of “explainers” in this story. Lots of dialogue that tells you what you need to know for the story to progress. As I was reading it, I would read a line and think, “Oh gosh, I would have written it like that, and that’s the style I don’t like.” It’s not the best writing. The writing is average. On the other hand, he handles the emotional scenes well. There were a few moments when you really feel the emotion.  The anger and the silent emotion he isn’t so good at. He turns it into sort of a righteous/just rage. Too much principle, not enough instinct. I promise you, if people were stuck in that situation, the instinct to survive would change people.

The story was pretty slow. I wasn’t too impressed with the action or the pace. The characters weren’t very deep, and there were a lot of unnecessary references in the book. I did, however, read the whole book and may or may not have shed a tear once or twice. If this is a concept that interests you, I recommend it. I like reading about how people would react in situations like this, and this book has a lot of that. If you’re looking for the science, I would look elsewhere. It is not a detail-heavy story. It’s a story of an ex-military man trying to survive with his family.

As a disclaimer, I do recommend that everyone prepare for at least a day or two without electricity or water. Northeastern Minnesota got hit with a totally unexpected and devastating flood this year. You know what they say, “Expect the unexpected.” I recommend a couple days food (if you use canned food, make sure to get the kind with the tab so you don’t also need a can opener) and a first aid kit (if you’re in cold climates make sure to have blankets or something like that). It’s a simple thing. It doesn’t matter if the power goes out for a couple days, there is a natural disaster, or there is a food shortage. I would rather have something set aside than have nothing.