Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

​Yes, I know, I’m late to the party. However I was deeply unimpressed by the movie in 2012, so I postponed reading the book by a decade and a half. Decade and a half passed quickly. The book is much better than the movie. At least it makes sense. Each story is connected and fully told, not just snippets like in the movie.  

The book has Matrioshka doll structure, while the movie is more of a mosaic. I’m not sure I’d call this book a novel as it is 7 interconnected short stories. Yes, the characters are “reincarnations” but they are not aware of their previous lives in details , so they just might be completely new humans. Their old selves are dead forever. 

As many have noted , this book is very pretentious. Starting with the structure and especially with the language and style of each short story, Mitchell tries to impress us with how educated and skillful he is , but falls mostly flat. The middle story with Zachary is the most pretentious one with the made up language which sounds like a four year old tried to remake English. Absolutely unnecessary and the worst story in all the book. 

I liked the Robert Frobisher epistolary story the best, although I did not see his suicide at 24 coming, as there’s not enough happening for him to want to kill himself - and definitely not because of the spoiled brat Eva. The rest is very interesting and Frobisher’s voice is very well defined with all the musical metaphors, although using obsolete Britishisms is redundant and only serves the pretentiousness of the author. 

The Timothy Cavendish story is also pretty good and fun to read and thank God, it has the least pretentious language. The Sonmi 451 story is also very weak, second weakest probably, as Mitchell is not a very good sci fi writer. The future where North Korea conquers most of Asia and turns into corporatist Unanimity is not very imaginative or interesting and the twist where the resistance is actually the regime is lifted straight from 1984. 

The Louisa Rey story is Mitchell’s attempt to write hard boiled detective fiction and it fails flat. Neither the inclusion of the Triads at the end counts as some big or interesting twist although we loved to hate the Fay woman. 

Overall this book wasn’t bad, even though it is an exercise in style rather than than substance , but the sheer length and pretentiousness would stave me off from reading it a second time. Still much better than the disjointed nonsensical movie. 

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

I'm a big fan of PK Dick, although he was a crazy bastard, always high on drugs, paranoid, probably schizophrenic, and a curse to everyone who knew him (like his newfound friends in Vancouver found out).   Hollywood has discovered PK Dick , but completely misunderstood or willingly misrepresented him.  Blade Runner is not about hunting androids - it is about religion and what religious feeling means - is it about empathy that only humans can feel?  Minority Report is not about high octane Sci Fi action, but about repressive state and police apparatus, where a man is never free until he dies.  It is good that this book has not been made into a movie yet, as it is probably going to turn into some commercialized Hollywood bullshit.  I always wondered why Hollywood didn't make into films William Gibson's books, since they are amazing, but I think now because it is difficult to put a twist on the dark nihilism in the books.  And dark nihilism in movies doesn't sell. 

Anyways, in Flow My Tears (a medieval flute song) Jason Taverner, a famous talk show and singer, dating the hottest singress on the planet, suddenly wakes up in a dingy hotel room without any IDs and no one knows who he is.  The hotel clerk (a police snitch who plants a tracker on Jason) leads him to a fake document girl maker, Kathy, who is also a police informer (US is a police state at this time, after the Second Civil War), who makes him some documents, then removes the transmitter dots from them in lieu of sleeping with him.  But Jason never sleeps with her because he discovers that she's batshit crazy and has a police handler who eventually sends her back to an asylum. 

Jason tries to hook up with his previous acquaintances but no one knows him. He doesn't exist. He's an unperson.  Eventually the police chief Felix Buckman, who is in an incestious relationship with his sister and claims to be a 'seven', which is above the 'six' than Jason is, a eugenics, genetically engineered human to be good looking and smart.  Buckman finds the circumstances Jason's in funny, and knowing the police state of which he was once a Marshall, knows that the fame or money will not help Jason if he gets caught in the "system". The system destroys people. 

Alys, Felix's sister, picks up Jason after he's released by Felix and she takes him to their house (they have an incest son in Florida), and tells him he was there before and they took drugs together.  She's always on drugs and does some occult shit.  Eventually she overdoses and dies on the new drug KR-3 which not only changes reality for the person who takes it, but for everyone around them as well.  Since Alys was jealous of Jason's fame, she imagined a world in which he doesn't exist and it happened.  

Jason escapes but Felix sets him up with the murder of Alys (which was an OD) and he goes to trial, but is exonerated and becomes even more famous that before.  Felix is fired and goes into retirement on Fiji where he is murdered by the USA Police State when he writes a book exposing them.  Eventually the police state fails and democracy comes back, forced labor camps area abandoned, and police checks and raids are things of the past. 

What PK Dick is trying to say is that we are all Jasons Taverners. We can all be disappeared in an instant and no one is ever going to find us. 

The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami

 Murakami remains my favorite writer of all time, however the last couple of books have been lower quality and this last one has been a chore to read through.  Still, good, but highly unreadable, especially compared to his masterpiece "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle".  

The book comes in three parts and the first part is the most unreadable as it is written in second person.  Murakami often writes in first person and sometimes in third person, but never before in second person.  One gets tired from "You did this, you wrote this, you said this...". The first part is about when the narrator was in high school, 17 years old, and met a girl, 16, at an essay competition and fell in love with her (and she with him).  They write very long letters to each other and are together, except for sex, as the girl tells him her real self is in a walled city far away from here.  Eventually the girl disappears and the author is devastated.

In the second part the narrator is 45, had some middling career in book trade, but never formed a family and is still brooding over the 16 year old girl from high school.  He quits his job in Tokyo, moves to the sticks and boonies of Fukushima prefecture.  There he becomes the head librarian and is coached by the ghost of the previous head librarian, Mr. Koyasu, who died a year before the narrator arrived.  Here he also meets a 16 year old boy who read voraciously and never talks to anyone except to ask them their birthday. Mr. Koyasu used to be the boy's mentor and the narrator tries to become his substitute.  The boy reveals that he knows about the City with the Uncertain Walls and wants the narrator to take him there, but he doesn't know how. 

In the third part the boy dies in the real world and his wooden corpse is discovered by the narrator in a dream in a dark closet in a mountain cabin and the narrator goes back to the City with the Uncertain Walls, which his real self never left, but only his shadow, and here he decides to leave and leave the boy, who inhabits his body, to be the Dream Reader.

Very allegoric and parabolic book with thoughts on life, youth, love, identity, self, shadow (in Jungian sense).  However, it seems to follow a Murakamian formula of dream self, split identity, non-identification with reality, etc.  These topics have already been espoused on in previous Murakami books to a great extent, so this one seems superfluous.  It is very voluminous, with not much to say, yet not like the other "slice of life" Murakami books - it is not easy to read and it doesn't flow easily.  

Murakami is still my favorite author, and it is nigh time he gets the Nobel prize in literature, but this book could have been better. 

King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

So, another re-read, but this time inspired by re-watching the "True Detective" Season 1 with my wife.  The best season, aside from 5. Season 2 is the worst. 

This is a book of short stories, and although only the first four have relationship to the Mythos with Hastur and the Yellow Sign which strongly influenced H.P. Lovecraft.

The best story is the first one "The Repairer of Reputations" which was written in an Unreliable Narrator style, where the narrator turns out to be the perpetrator. 

In the "Forbidden Play", which links the first four stories,  the King in Yellow is in Carcosa, the lost city on the Lake of Hali and everyone who sees the second act dies. Fortunately, just the first act is in this book. 

In the other stories "The Mask" and "In the Court of the Dragon" and "They Yellow Sign" - the supernatural horror that Lovecraft writes about in his famous essay is not as present as in the first story, and they are more of embellishments to the Mythos than creating them.  In the "Mask' a genius artist invents a solution that turns people into statue.  It doesn't work out well when his girlfriend is turned into a statue and the artist commits a suicide.  In the "Court of the Dragon" a cursed church organist claims the the soul of an unfortunate Parisian and in the "Yellow Sign" two people read the cursed play and an undead churchyard watchman comes to kill them.

The first story is the most important in the collections - the rest can just as well be skimmed through. 

Ready Player Two by Ernst Cline

So, yes, I read this book right after the first one in May 2025.  But I never wrote a review. Why? Because. Many things. Did my TOGAF study and training and exams, then played a lot of video games, then just stressed about life, job, money, future, life.  For months. Month after month. Didn't write anything anywhere. I don't really know why. I just didn't feel like it. For months. I still read.  The newest Murakami book took months to read.  It is not great. It is good, but I am used to only great books from Murakami. I read others too. Some I forgot. Some I will write about in 2026. This year. Typing on my DROP ENTR keyboard with Yellow switches.

So, about the second player book from Cline. A disappointment.  A great one.  Come 'on Cline. You could have done better than "Rogue AI is taking over the world".  Anorak's avatar became a "self conscious" AI and is taking over the world through the ONI VR glasses (taking a shot at Oculus here, Cline, eh?)  which have immobilized and can kill most of the world population (who got addicted to the VR world and don't  want to live in the Real One). 

So, it is three years later and Wade has already fallen out with Art3mis, and lo and behold he finds a new message in an old easter egg with ONI VR headset which transports the user into a full VR world without the need for a bodysuit. Here we have the evil AI Anorak (Halliday's Shadow) take over the world by removing the 12 hour safety limit on ONI and causing everyone brain damage.  Anorak wants Wade & co to complete the 7 shards quest in order to resurrect Kira's consciousness.  Apparently, ONI also makes duplicates of users consciousness which can then live on as their own beings. This doesn't mean the original body doesn't die, so the new consciousness is more of a simulation. The old guy is dead as a nail. 

So, eventually we get to the part where Kira's copied consciousness becomes an entity on its own, which is very unbelievable, as consciousness doesn't just 'arise' on its own.  We see a different side of Halliday, selfish, egotistic, no empathy; which is interesting on its own, but doesn't develop the character significantly.  Eventually Wade creates an AI copy of himself and sends him on a starship to explore the universe.  

Overall, not a bad read, but way lower quality than the first book.  Entertaining though, especially for us 80s kids. 

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

I watched the movie, and since it was produced by Disney and directed by Spielberg, I know it was made family-friendly and I expected the book to be more edgy. I wasn't disappointed.  While the movie is enjoyable, the book is much better, more adult oriented and with way more "retro" trivia of video games and movies.  The characters are the same, but the major events are quite different.  Cline says because he used way too many copyrighted references in the book, which would cost a fortune to obtain rights to show on screen. Also, all characters in the book are much less pretty, all being overweight and Wade being completely hairless, from top to bottom.  

There is no race for the first key, instead it is a dungeons and dragons game that is found on the planet Ludus where all public schools are and playing a game of "Joust" (classic video game from before my time, never played it). The first gate opens by doing full "flicksync" of the movie "War Games" playing as Matthew Broderick, having to know the full dialogue.  The second key has to do with the legendary "Zork" video game and the 1983 classic SciFi "Blade Runner" and the gate is opened by playing the 1987 game "Black Tiger" (another I've never played, slightly before my time as a gamer).  Wade also plays a perfect game of PacMan with the maximum obtainable High Score, which awards him an extra coin.

The third key is hinted by a song from the Canadian band "Rush" and their concept album "2112" and the thirds gate is the actual Castle of Anorak that Halliday used as an HQ while alive. Of course the "IOI" are always following Wade, trying to kill him (they kill his aunt and everyone in the stack vertical where Wade lived), and also kill Daito, one of the "High Five" who were first at the top of the Scoreboard. Not funny and not for kids.

There's a battle for the Third Gate, and the top players, including Sorrento with his Mechagodzilla, and just when Wade is about to win, IOI detonate doomsday device which destroys the entire planet and everything on it. However, the Pacman coin Wade won gives him an extra life and he enters the third gate where his plays character in the classic movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and obtains the easter egg from the early video game "Adventure."  Wade wins and shares his winnings with the other 3 remaining of the "High Five". Also loses his virginity to Artem1s.

The book is a joy to read, especially if you are a video game (and movie, and space rock) geek, and get all or most of the bountiful references.  I am ready to read the sequel "Ready Player Two" although I've read that it is not as good as the first book. 

Gurdjieff, a Master in Life: Recollections of Tscheslaw Tschekhovitch

 Another book by a direct pupil of Gurdjieff.  Tscheslaw was a Polish soldier in the Russian Imperial Army.  After their defeat by the Red Army, Tscheslaw joined Gurdijeff's Moscow and St. Petersburg groups who were slowly migrating south towards Turkey, through the Russian Caucasus. Tscheslaw was with Gudjieff in Constantinople and gives us first had accounts of Gurdjieff's time there and how he fed the Russian emigres and encouraged them (pushed them) into starting their own viable businesses. 

The author was on his own for moving to Germany and had a bad situation in Hungary where the Ukrainian consul betrayed him and tried to exchange him as a deserter for Ukrainian hostages in the Red Army.  After a short stay in Germany, the author joins Gurdjieff in France, The Priuere castle and property near Fontainbleu and describes all the events there through its existence, including Gurdjieff's car accident, and how the weasel who helped them settle in France was instrumental in them losing Le Prieure with the human weasel appropriating most of the money from the purchase. 

The author also describes the work while Gurdjieff lived in an apartment in Paris, although he didn't accompany him on his trips to America. The book is a rare jewel of first hand accounts of Gurdjieff and the life he led.