There is still snow on the ground outside. I am scheduled to play at a Global Warming rally tomorrow. Sigh. I actually feel like crawling under a rock this morning. Too much input probably.

I have been taking consolation in the early piano sonatas of Beethoven. I never used to like Beethoven all that much. But he is fun to play on the piano and it calms my weary mind.

I am loving the book I am reading: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. The book skips from one story to another of different people who are cleverly connected. It spans a huge period of years. By the middle of the book, the reader has been taken from the 1800s on a pacific island to far in the future on some difficult to identify place (Hawaii?).

The story keeps you interested from section to section. This guy could write one helluva serial (he would make the recent spat of New York Times Magazine writers who have had their works featured as serials look like rank amateurs. Come to think of it there is a blurb on this book by Michael Chabon, whose serial novel is currently running in the NYT mag. I gave up on Chabon. But Chabon says this about Cloud Atlas… “I’ve never read anything quite like it.” I bet, judging from your current effort which is dense and bores me…)

Anyway Mitchell helps me remember what skill certain authors have. I am relishing his story the way I used to relish a new Anthony Burgess novel.

After mid-way in the story, he reverses his time flow but not the unfolding story. It is a virtuoso  performance as far as this reader is concerned. He does this (for example) by having someone in the future spend her last hours before excution watching an old movie from the past. This movie is based on the life of a previous character in the book. She begins watching the movie where his story left off….. get it? very clever I think.

Anyway, we’ll see if I am still so happy with this book after I finish it. I am about three quarters of the way through it.