felt like peak literature after cloud atlas. it was a cute read. also refreshing to read a woman writer; you'll think you're a uniquely unidentifiable subhuman until you remember that everything you read/hear/watch is made by men. this book also reminds you that academics and their navel-gazing are really embarrassing; my interest in the career is purely another one of my humiliation rituals.

longest 400 pages of my life. so boring I thought I was losing the attention span I'm so proud of having. I like that studying english forces me to read beyond my taste, and I can always get something out of books I don't even enjoy. but I really struggled to feel anything for cloud atlas. I can do style without substance but not substance without style -- it was too much plot. I get why we're reading it for the postmodernism unit, but does postmodernism have to be so corny? I lost the little investment I had when the sci-fi dystopia turned out to be north korean. (hover to view spoilers) my one positive is that I liked the robert chapters, and the second at the end even slightly revived my interest. but timothy's were insufferable to read and it only gets worse. homestuck did everything David Mitchell tried to do but better.

reminded me of Upton Sinclair's the jungle. not only for the early 20th century eastern european industrial labourers, but Ondaantje's references to his own work with archives made me think of Sinclair's journalistic efforts; even the labor of the book itself is forced on our consciousness. at first, I wasn't sure about a poet writing prose, but I can tolerate the more vague, concise language than the tumblr writer verbiage I expected (which was maybe an anachronistic assumption). we also read it with Hayden White and the Lacanian-historian-literary-critic indulged me.

embarrassed I only read it now. like Frankenstein, the plot details feel a little too convoluted when its premise is already general cultural knowledge. but I enjoyed it.