My Two Favorite Books

Hello to anyone who might be reading this! Today I just want to talk a little bit about some of my favorite books.
Now I would like to apologize beforehand for the length of this posting. My two favorite books, that I would recommend to ANYONE are The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom and Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. If you would like to learn more about these novels you can read the rest of this post!!!

I would have to say my third favorite book I have ever read is, The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. I have read all of his books and I would highly recommend them to everyone, but I think this novel is the best that he has written. I feel wonderful and sad when I read this book. It makes me wonder about the afterlife and it makes me wonder the people I meet and what kind of impact they may have on my life.
The plot of this story is an old man who works in an amusement park. One day there is a terrible problem wrong with a ride there and he, the main character, Eddie, is head of mechanics so he goes to the ride to inspect the problem. Now, this ride is the "spaceshot" where people sit around a tall base and get "shot" up hundreds of feet into the air. So in the very beginning of this story, Eddie ends up getting killed by this ride because the cable is loose and the seats fall all the way down crushing him. Terrible start to a story but this is the first rising action. Now the story can really kick off!
So the story continues with Eddie being somewhat stuck between life and death. Eddie takes a long look back at his life and meets five people who made a huge impact on his life while he was living. He spends a fair amount of time with each person and without giving away the last person.... he meets a person who not only impacted his life but Eddie played a major role in changing theirs.
This novel made me cry in the end and it also made me want there to be more of a story. For me, I have thought about how you could continue the story past the final paragraph but I think by doing so the novel would just be ruined. (Well not ruined but I do not think it would be as good.) It's like making a sequel to Indiana Jones: The Lost Ark. Now, don't get me wrong, that movie was good as well as the third. In my opinion it was the second and fourth that I really thought were terrible movies. Anyway, this novel is one that you can read in one sitting, and trust me, one you start that will end up happening. This novel has also been made into a movie and I would recommend seeing the movie but only after reading the book, because books are always better anyways.
(These are also other Mitch Albom books I recommend:)
Tuesday's with Morrie
For One More Day
Have a Little Faith
(I have read all of these books!)

Now for my favorite novel ever.....! I would like to start off by saying I just recently finished this novel and presented it for my Honors English final (and I got an A+!) This novel is called Cloud Atlas and it is written by David Mitchell. (Not to get confused with Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan). The plot of this story line is extremely difficult to explain but I feel as if my best friend, Leigh Ann, and I are masters at this. The main theme or connection throughout this novel is that all main characters are reincarnated into each other. So the first main character, Adam Ewing, is reincarnated into the second main character, Robert Frobisher.
The structure of this novel is like an eleven word palindrome. Such as "RACECAR" (except racecar only has 7 words). This is a bit confusing so bare with me please! You read the first half of stories one through five. Then you read an uninterrupted story, which is also the middle mini novel, then you read the second halves of stories one through five in reverse order. So like a palindrome!
You start this novel immediately jumping into the past during the antebellum or pre civil war time period. Here you meet a man named Adam Ewing who is aboard a ship exploring the Pacific Ocean and is found living in the Cathem Islands in New Zealand. You read this mini novel as a journal and during one point the mini novel just abruptly stops--mid sentence.
From there you move on to the second mini novel: Letters from Zedelghem which is when you meet a young man trying to further his music dream as becoming a well known composer. This mini novel takes place in Belgium during the 1930s and is written in the way that the main charcter, Robert Frobisher, writes letters to his bisexual lover/friend.
After reading the first half of this mini novel you jump to the next which takes place during 1975 in Buenas Yerbas, California where you meet a determined journalist trying to expose an unsafe nuclear powerplant. This journalist is Lusia Rey and she presents her story in a thriller third person narrative. As you read her story, you come upon a major climax in the story and then the first half is then stops and you move on to the fourth story: The Ghastly Ordeals of Timothy Cavendish. Here you meet a 64 year old man who works as a publicist in England present time (2004). The plot in this mini novel is when Timothy Cavendish is traveling to what he thinks is a hotel but is actually a retirement home. He doesn't realize this at first and he ends up getting trapped. His entire story is presented in an autobiography format which you read about his struggles in trying to escape the retirement home.
Then the reader moves on to the fifth story which is called An Orison of Sonmi~451. This story is now taken place in the near future which I interpreted as approximately the year 2104 (or 100 years after Timothy Cavendish's mini novel). This world is created as a dystopian super Korea where clones are existant and are produced to serve others. These clones are not allowed to show emotions or feeling but nor do they have any. In this story you meet a clone named Sonmi~451. She works in Papa Song's Diner which is like a present day McDonald's. But in the first half of her story she learns a secret about the outside world and begins to show her hidden knowledge and emotions. It is now that she is taken from the diner to live a nearby university and share herself with the rest of the world. This is presented in an interview format; Sonmi~451 is a clone getting interviewed about her life.
Finally, the first half of the fifth story ends and you reach your middle mini novel: Sloosha's Crossin' An' Ev'rythin' After. This story takes place in Hawaii after the fall of civilization, which is never explained. My friends and I took this as an opportunity to debate about what caused the fall to occur. We contemplated and finally came up with that nuclear war/problems as well as genetic faults finally became too much for the world to handle and most people died off and then everything became extremely corrupt after that. We have our evidence taken directly from the novel but since David Mitchell never plainly explains his theory, we can only create ours as can you after you read this novel. We also interpreted this mini novel to have taken place around the year 2500. So after you read this entire uninterrupted mini novel you go back to reading the second half of An Orison of Sonmi~451 and then the second half of The Ghastly Ordeals  of Timothy Cavendish as so forth until you read the very last page of Adam Ewing's story. I would highly recommend this book to anyone from ages 15 and up. I enjoyed this novel so much and at one point I actually found myself crying because I had read all of it. This is how obsessed I became and how much this novel impacted my life for the weeks I was reading it. Cloud Atlas is currently being made into a movie and should be coming out in theatres by next year. I would recommend if you want to see this movie that you read the novel first because, I will repeat, books are always better than their movies!!!
(Here are some other David Mitchell books I recommend:)
Ghostwritten
Number9dream
Black Swan Green
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
(I am currently working on reading all of these books!)

For more information on the movie, Cloud Atlas, visit this site!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1371111/
<3 your devoted writer, Bre