[bksvol-discuss] Cloud Atlas uploaded
- From: Cindy <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 13:57:39 -0700 (PDT)
Amber, Tiffany, Kelly Ford, and anyone else
interested: I have finally finished validating and
have accepted Cloud Atlas.
The brief summary, as you all know, had to be very
brief, and does not adequately describe the book. I
was able to put a lot into the long summary. Not being
sure how much I could put in, I put in the most
important stuff but there's more I want to say about
the book, so here it is.
The style of this book is unusual. It will seem as if
there are pages missing, but they are not. To quote
from a Library Journal review, "Beginning with a
mid-19th-century Pacific voyage, the book then vaults
to an early 20th-century composer who cuckolds his
mentor, a 1970s reporter pursued by hitmen when she
joins forces with a company whistleblower, a put-upon
editor trapped inside a home for the aged, a servant
clone interrogated about her travels to the outside
world, and, finally, a return to the Pacific, only
centuries later in a post-civilization world. Got it?
Now tie up the cliffhangers in reverse order, going
backward in time. ?"
There are unusual spellings and unusual words in the
book. (Your vocabulary will be greatly increased, I
believe, if you read this book ? even Guido?s &
Pratik?s, I think. I thought I had an extensive
vocabulary, and some of the words I recognized, but
many I did not know.) In addition to having been read,
the book has been spell-checked, so be assured there
are very few if any mis-spellings. English rather than
American spelling is used. Punctuation is correct,
though at times it may not seem to be.
Each section of the book is written in a different
style. In "An Orison of Sonmi-451," the fourth story,
those of you who listen will not be aware of
differences from the norm, because the words will
sound normal. I don't know about Braille. I gather
from your comments that Braille is like a shorthand
rather than a letter-by-letter spelling of words, in
which case you'll miss the strangeness, too, so-- some
explanation. All words that sound as if they start
with 'ex" actually just start with "x." The words that
are brand names to us, like "sony," "ford" "kodak," et
al, are not capitalized; they are generic for the
items. "Gh" in words where they have no sound, e.g.,
"l i g h t," "t h o u g h" , are eliminated. Words are
spelled as they sound..
The fifth story, Soosha?s Crossing, has a lot of
dialect. It would be, for me, a lot easier to hear it
than to read it. (smile).Words are connected, there
are made-up words, and there are a lot of commas where
one would expect periods. Just go with the flow,
almost literally. Just read along rapidly and it will
make sense, more or less.
The scanning and/or pre-validating was very good..
There were very few scannos in the text itself,.
especially in the first two-thirds of the book. All
that needed to be done were formatting corrections,
blank pages removed, and somegarbled pages fixed
where the book hadn?t been held down strongly enough ?
but most of the text that was there was practically
perfect.
There is sex and violence but obliquely, not vividly
described.
The book is not only interesting in form and fiction
but is philosophical, if I?m using the word correctly.
The author embeds in his story a lot of serious
comments about right and wrong, war, bigotry, human
nature, etc., etc.
Cindy
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
Other related posts:
- » [bksvol-discuss] Cloud Atlas uploaded
