Even though this book is actually chronological the way the POVs are structured reminds me oddly of Cloud Atlas -- there's Jacob on a ship at the beginning and the end, of course, and right in the middle is a woman trapped in a situation where she and others are being physically exploited for a set ...
This book came from the library with a post-it note on the inside cover: "This book is brilliant". I couldn't decide whether that was cute or annoying until I actually started reading, and now I completely understand what would push someone to resort to a post-it note. This book is brilliant! David ...
This was a great historical novel focusing on just a few characters and a short span of years. It tells the tale of Dutch clerk Jacob de Zoet, the pious son of a deacon, and his unexpectedly long stay at the Dutch trading post of Dejima, at the time (late 18th/early 19th century) the West's only con...
Outstanding! After two chapters, I picked up a copy of Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, and if I'd had more money I'd have picked up all of his books.I hardly know what to write about this meticulous, compelling novel. I'll leave plot summaries to previous reviewers. I loved the setup of the young Dutchman ...
I just saw this quote, I don't know which book it comes from, but I think it exemplifies why I'm not going to be reading this author:"Memories are their own descendents masquerading as the ancestors of the present."What the hell is that supposed to mean? It sounds cool, but it utterly fails to conve...
This is probably a very fine story, but it's another one of those I cannot read because it's written in the present tense. It takes place in 1799, so there's no intelligent reason for not using the past tense. Oh well, I've never had any luck getting through any of Mitchell's books. Not my guy, I...
Finished this with tears in my eyes - a phenomenally well-written, brilliantly researched and very moving book. He gets better and better. Glad I bought this as a hardback!
I had a hard time settling into this book, with some of the flowery language turning me off at first. ("...a cacophony of frogs detonates?" Really?) But I kept at it, and I ended up really enjoying the story, at least for the most part. Jumping right into a Dutch trading settlement on the edge of...
workaday mp3 Unabridged (~19 hours) Read by Jonathan Aris and Paula Wilcoxblurb - The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the far...
My first [UPDATE 5/12 -- "only"... *sigh*:] win on First Reads.*MarvAlberty* YESSS.Which kind of review do you want? (Well... why do you read?)Some 400 pages into the novel, various narrative fuses burning ever more quickly toward combustion and the promise of a big closing bang, one of the protago...
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