Fin­ished read­ing Cloud At­las, gave it 5 start­s. Here's a quick re­view:

I am not go­ing to ex­plain this book. It's enough, I think, to say I loved it, and that it's strange, and that it's a bit of a mis­tery.

Imag­in­ing a uni­verse in which all the con­tents of the book could be re­al at the same time in a way that would al­low all the pieces to be writ­ten as they are and yet, be, some­how, not the nov­el they are, but a found ar­ti­fac­t, is both de­press­ing and el­lu­sive.

At the end, I felt some­thing I can on­ly de­scribe as ret­ro­spec­tive hope, the feel­ing that things were sup­posed to end up bet­ter, but that even as ter­ri­bly as they did end, were it not by that ear­li­er hope, they would have been more grim.

The con­trol the au­thor has over his own style is im­pres­sive. This book feels writ­ten by half a dozen com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent writ­er­s.

Some quotes (which may on­ly make sense once you read the book):

"The sun was deaf­'n­in' so high up, yay, it roared an' time streamed from it."

"In the first set, each so­lo is in­ter­rupt­ed by its suc­ces­sor: in the sec­ond, each in­ter­rup­tion is re­con­tin­ued, in or­der. Rev­o­lu­tion­ary or gim­mick­y? Shan't know un­til it's fin­ished, and by then it'll be too late"

"What would­n't I give now for a nev­er-chang­ing map of the ev­er-­con­stant in­ef­fa­ble? To posess, as it were, an at­las of cloud­s."