cloud atlas

I've begun to wonder if I simply lack creativity. This would be a major problem, since I consider myself a creative person. I spent my entire childhood daydreaming about god-knows-what, barely got through college, wrote a book of questionable quality, and to date I still hold entire fictional conversations with myself in the bathroom mirror. Out loud. That's what creative types do, right?

By the way, I apologize for the above paragraph. It has no right to exist. It's a really poorly written paragraph.

Anyway, I'll tell you where my concern stems from. I just finished David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and I loved it. And I'm wondering: Do I just love it because I know it's going to be a movie and I can picture all the characters since all the actors have been chosen?

Because when I read Mitchell's other book, Ghostwritten, which has a really similar style, I didn't really like it. So I began to second-guess my vivid imagination. And my taste.

But all that aside, I believe Cloud Atlas is practically a work of genius. Mitchell gives his characters such distinct voices -- that alone would be brilliant. I mean, he practically invents another language for one character. But the subject matter is visionary. He goes hundreds, maybe thousands of years into the future, showing us a couple of possibilities for the human race that I think are dangerously accurate. He makes reincarnation a reality. He made me wish it was a reality. He jumps around in time and ties each story up in a neat package; each story itself could be its own book. It's simply lovely.

So obviously, I recommend it.

And I will be at the theater on opening weekend.

I get chills every time I watch the trailer...