Beck: The Mongolian Chop Squad is the best story about a band forming and trying to make it I've come across. It's a manga as well as having an anime adaption.
Excellent review. Thousand autumns... is a rich read. David Mitchell is a sentence master. There are several brilliant sentences in Utopia Avenue. The chapter w mecca n jasper is sweet n meta
As a stand alone novel, I might not have enjoyed UA as much, but as someone who has read all of Mitchell’s work, the tie-ins to his other works did enough to scratch the itch for me. If you read it looking for a brilliant rock novel, you’ll be disappointed, but if you read it to learn more about Mitchell’s universe, you’ll probably like it.
Oh damn, I loved this. It is probably one of my favorite Mitchell books. It's a bit like Black Swan Green, where every chapter is the seed of a piece or art. It's really more about the scene than about the band, i guess. No, I really enjoyed this
"A book that is shit." lol I'd highly recommend Patti Smith - Just Kids. Although it's technically not really about music appreciation, but more about Patti Smith finding her way in life and eventually becoming part of the Greenwich Village Folk Scene. At the least you can know that it's genuine and not hanging on clichés about the real lives of musicians!
Oh, yeah. I liked it too. She writes so warmly about the artistic scene of the time (except for Andy Warhol hangers-on, maybe) and her Chelsea hotel descriptions are such a stark contrast to the Lethem's character account of the place from 'Dissident Gardens'interesting waswithgenuine
@@TheBookchemist Great, will be good to find out how you think it compares! My dad's a massive folk fan so I'm always trying to find him a good book on music. As a forewarning she writes quite a bit about Arthur Rimbaud so it might be good to queue Illuminations up around the time you read it.
I'm with you on the Lethem and the Chabon and I haven't read that Delillo, but I enjoyed Utopia Avenue from start to finish. I agree that Jasper's story makes no sense if you haven't read The Bone Clocks and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, but I didn't care. I've read them both (and Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green and Slade House) and I think David Mitchel has no fucks to give. I don't think Utopia Avenue is his best book, but I loved every single cameo, no matter how cheesy they were and I just went through most of this book with a massive grin on my face. Based on your positive reaction to the other Mitchell books you've read, I am positive you will love both The Bone Clocks and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I can't promise you will think more fondly of this one after that, but I believe Mitchell is intentionally painting on a broader canvas than a book by book writing career and he's having the most fun writing for his audience of any modern writer who gets filed under "literary fiction".
I get what you mean, and I'm sure I will appreciate the connections more after reading those books. Still, what really gets me about Jasper's storyline (which up to its end was really, really stimulating!) is how sloppily it is resolved. We get this sense that solving his problem will come at a terrible cost, and I can even excuse the convenient intrusion of the strangers... ... But then his curse is lifted with no impact on him or, really, on anyone else. Everything is peachy!! That's not just cheesy, it's just very lazy.
Very interesting review. Besides being a bookworm I'm also very much into music. I think I've been more or less subconsciously avoiding novels about music because I feel that it's hard to translate the experience I get from music into literature.
Music is also sort of oversaturated with sentimentalism and derivative ideas. In Search of Lost Time has the best implementation of music in a novel to me. There's one or two pieces consistently mentioned, and they're usually used as an emotional motif for the characters--reminding them of something, making them think of the separation between words and musical beauty. Proust also just describes musical pieces unbelievably well and always connects them to emotions like surprise and higher thought. It'll be like 10 pages just about how a musical piece made someone feel in the moment.
Thank you for the great work. Some time this year I will start reading Cloud Atlas since I have it sitting on a shelf for quite a long time. Never read anything by Mitchell before.
So, maybe I won't finish this? I was hoping it would improve. It was okay in the beginning, but now that I'm in the middle it's like a chore reading it. I was hoping for so much more from this novel.
I’ve recently read and reviewed all of the David Mitchell books on my channel and I agree with you on this one, but interestingly (to me, anyway), I still liked it purely because of the multitude of connections to the previous books. There’s more connections to Utopia Avenue in the metaverse than any other book, and I had read his first novel which has the Mongolian character in it right before Utopian Avenue. So I ended up knowing that it’s poorly written… yet somehow liking it because I got so much pay off from many other novels. It was a very strange experience. Lol
I too loved Cloud Atlas. Also loved Black Swan Green. I have all his books because I too think he's in a class by himself, but this is the book I'm least interested in. Agree with your comments about books that write about music. I appreciate your honesty and passion.
Just curious, was the namedrop of Ken Follett in this video meant to indicate you didn't think much of his work? I ask because I was planning on reading the Pillars of the Earth later this year.
I happened to love this one. But this is the one book where he broke his own rule. A quote from an interview in 2020. "The danger was, and is, clear: what if someone hadn’t read Cloud Atlas? Narrative coherence of Book B cannot be contingent upon having read Book A. That’s the rule. As it happens, I have no wish to devote my creative years to writing instalments of a single mammoth work the size of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, thousands and thousands of pages where you have to read them all. I’d feel trapped. However, if you have encountered “returnees” from previous novels, their words and actions will be weighted a little differently to the experience of meeting them for the first time, and so the time you spend with them will feel a little different." And I think I would have felt the way you did if I hadn't read Ghostwritten and Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet first. Not that this actually addresses most of the issues you had with it, but I think it's a fair point to make.
I think Ghostwritten is the most sublime example of his unusual structure style, but my favourite is The Bone Clocks. Cloud Atlas is of course wonderful, but more challenging.
As for recommendations, I remember liking Alastaire Reynolds' "At Budokan" short story, mainly because it combined rock music and dinosaurs. And Catherynne Valente's "Space Opera" was cute: aliens I don't remember that much about but musician characters were endearing. Though maybe my standards weren't very high as I'm only a casual music listener. Idk, very tentative recommendation for this one.
I so enjoyed hearing your frustration over the lazy use of Italian. Would absolutely love to get your opinion on my favorite book, which is by Kate Atkinson, Life After Life. ❤️
@@constancecampbell4610 Apparently A God In Ruins is even better but haven't read it yet. I do have it so will get to it eventually. I might start Behind The Scenes At The Museum first
@@irena7777777 I read A God in Ruins, but was expecting it to be “like” LAL, which it was not. Go into it knowing that and you will be better able to appreciate it. Loved Behind the Scenes and enjoyed her Jackson Brody novels so much. ❤️
I have a question, Mattia. I know that you specialize in postmodern literature and have a great love for many postmodern authors, but what are your personal feelings towards postmodernism as a philosophy and a movement? Do you generally agree with it and view it as a positive development, or are you merely interested in studying it (a lá someone like Fredric Jameson)? As a Marxist myself, I have a lot of problems with postmodernism as a social, cultural, and academic ‘ideology.’
I definitely moved from being a bit of a "fanboy" of the movement to a more detached appreciation of it. I definitely think that, in its "purest" form, it feeds on some aspects of American culture that might not be as innocent and whimsical as I once thought. These days I wouldn't say I am "for" or "against it" - I can be more or less convinced by individual works and authors within it, rather. The greatest of the postmoderns was Thomas Pynchon after all, and I still believe that he is the most significant, insightful and complexly political writer of the last hundred years.
Just recently discovered your channel and have been binge watching and adding several of your recommendations to my reading queue. I love the fact that your reviews are overwhelmingly positive and make me want to seek out the books in question, though in this case I'm also glad for the negative review as I've been trying to decide what is the best introduction to Mitchell's work. I love your channel, though I must say that the madcap music about halfway thru this video is kind of an unwelcome distraction from your commentary. Just sayin'... Please keep doing what you're doing!
start with _The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet_ if you want something accessible, and if you want something more experimental, try _Ghostwritten._ if you enjoy the latter, move onto _Cloud Atlas_ (his masterpiece imo, but i wouldn't consider it to be among his most approachable work since it can be a little challenging at points)
I've read every one of Mitchell's novels and Ghostwritten, to me, comes very close to the brilliance of Cloud Atlas which is my favourite book of all times! I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did
@@irena7777777 yes! not my favourite but a good mix between "historical" fiction (it's reminiscent of the classic explorers' tales and you can actually learn a fair bit) and Mitchellesque fantasy. However, I'd argue it's the most "standard" of Mitchell's novels. But definitely worth the (rather long) read!
Great review. I’ve been searching for a good review of this book. “David Mitchell is the Megadeth of ContemporaryFiction” 😂 🤘🏽🤘🏽I can now shamelessly knock this one off my TBR. Thank you!
I’ve been struggling with this book since receiving it as a gift for Christmas 2020. To me, it reads as though it was written by a high school student. Every famous person’s is referred to by their full name at every mention. Mitchell’s attempt to sound out Dean’s accent is just wrong - he’s made a Gravesend accent sound like a country bumpkin! No on from Gravesend says “yer” instead of “you”; perhaps “yuh” but not “yer”. I’m ploughing on, but it is a dreadful book full of cliches.
Lmao this scathing review of Utopia Avenue reminded me of exactly how I felt after reading The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin. Seriously, don't read that fucking book, it's horribly written. On another note, I would love to hear you review Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin. It's a short story that has the scope of a novel, and packs a greater emotional punch than many novels I've read lately (certainly more than The City We Became).
Haha. So you felt about it this way? I wanted to like it as I liked the original short story (it was reused in a novel as a prologue, basically) that it was based on but was, likewise, pretty disappointed. There were a couple of jokes I liked but there were also some truly embarrassing scenes and generally, yeah, it wasn't very well thought through in my opinion.
@@nikchemnyk I agree, I was excited for it to continue the short story! But then I started reading, and I literally couldn't stop rolling my eyes at some of the writing. Ugh.
i'm also a big fan of David Mitchell, and it seems like you and i usually end up having similar reactions to his works. i definitely felt that _Utopia Avenue_ was massively disappointing and am still genuinely baffled by the rave reviews it seems to have garnered so far online. it's a bloated, meandering, juvenile, and (sometimes) flat-out badly-written cliché of a novel that lacks any of the sophistication and imaginativeness of Mitchell's best stuff (despite Jasper's subplot, which i thought was thoroughly entertaining until its sloppy ending). and holy shit, those celebrity cameos. every single one, without exception, was absolutely ridiculous. i can't even begin to express how much i disliked them however, *please* don't feel deterred at all from exploring his earlier works; i honestly would be shocked if you read _Cloud Atlas_ and didn't end up absolutely loving _Ghostwritten._ also among my favourites is _The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,_ a really fun piece of historical fiction great content as always, keep it up!
You have revealed your lack of knowledge of other Mitchell books. Jasper's whole arch is also predictable once you know his last name and if you've read the Mitchell book with that last namer in the title. The resolution totally makes sense and is not a deus ex machina to people who have read other Mitchell books. Also, while the book is predictable to a degree, it's themes of fate, destiny, what can we change, what is set in stone, etc. is part of all Mitchell books. and is explored through each character. This is why Dean dies at the end. It was not my favorite Mitchell book, but I did enjoy it.
Wow! What a change of pace! Yeah, it's unfortunate that the best writers are not always the most anal (thorough?) people when it comes to foreign languages. English in one of Karel Capek's plays was also pretty suspect.
I am going to give enthusiastic reviewers the benefit of the doubt and assume they had a hard deadline and just wrote the review on the assumption that it was Mitchell and the book would be good ;)
I couldn't read it, I really tried but it comes across as someone observing how music works from the outside without really understanding it, often on a pretty basic level, similar to daisy and the 6 but that had proper characters that lived within the context of music which meant you could overlook how it felt inauthentic because it was character driven, I wanted to like this book so much, I love most of DM other books but this one is a massive lemon I'm afraid
Beck: The Mongolian Chop Squad is the best story about a band forming and trying to make it I've come across. It's a manga as well as having an anime adaption.
Excellent review. Thousand autumns... is a rich read. David Mitchell is a sentence master. There are several brilliant sentences in Utopia Avenue. The chapter w mecca n jasper is sweet n meta
As a stand alone novel, I might not have enjoyed UA as much, but as someone who has read all of Mitchell’s work, the tie-ins to his other works did enough to scratch the itch for me. If you read it looking for a brilliant rock novel, you’ll be disappointed, but if you read it to learn more about Mitchell’s universe, you’ll probably like it.
Oh damn, I loved this. It is probably one of my favorite Mitchell books.
It's a bit like Black Swan Green, where every chapter is the seed of a piece or art. It's really more about the scene than about the band, i guess. No, I really enjoyed this
"A book that is shit." lol
I'd highly recommend Patti Smith - Just Kids. Although it's technically not really about music appreciation, but more about Patti Smith finding her way in life and eventually becoming part of the Greenwich Village Folk Scene. At the least you can know that it's genuine and not hanging on clichés about the real lives of musicians!
Oh, yeah. I liked it too. She writes so warmly about the artistic scene of the time (except for Andy Warhol hangers-on, maybe) and her Chelsea hotel descriptions are such a stark contrast to the Lethem's character account of the place from 'Dissident Gardens'interesting waswithgenuine
It's been recommended to me extensively :)! I will definitely read it soon ;)
@@TheBookchemist Great, will be good to find out how you think it compares! My dad's a massive folk fan so I'm always trying to find him a good book on music. As a forewarning she writes quite a bit about Arthur Rimbaud so it might be good to queue Illuminations up around the time you read it.
I'm with you on the Lethem and the Chabon and I haven't read that Delillo, but I enjoyed Utopia Avenue from start to finish.
I agree that Jasper's story makes no sense if you haven't read The Bone Clocks and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, but I didn't care. I've read them both (and Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green and Slade House) and I think David Mitchel has no fucks to give. I don't think Utopia Avenue is his best book, but I loved every single cameo, no matter how cheesy they were and I just went through most of this book with a massive grin on my face.
Based on your positive reaction to the other Mitchell books you've read, I am positive you will love both The Bone Clocks and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I can't promise you will think more fondly of this one after that, but I believe Mitchell is intentionally painting on a broader canvas than a book by book writing career and he's having the most fun writing for his audience of any modern writer who gets filed under "literary fiction".
I get what you mean, and I'm sure I will appreciate the connections more after reading those books. Still, what really gets me about Jasper's storyline (which up to its end was really, really stimulating!) is how sloppily it is resolved. We get this sense that solving his problem will come at a terrible cost, and I can even excuse the convenient intrusion of the strangers...
... But then his curse is lifted with no impact on him or, really, on anyone else. Everything is peachy!! That's not just cheesy, it's just very lazy.
@@TheBookchemist One could well argue that the lifting of his curse DOES come at a terrible cost, even if we don't see it immediately.
Very interesting review. Besides being a bookworm I'm also very much into music. I think I've been more or less subconsciously avoiding novels about music because I feel that it's hard to translate the experience I get from music into literature.
Music is also sort of oversaturated with sentimentalism and derivative ideas. In Search of Lost Time has the best implementation of music in a novel to me. There's one or two pieces consistently mentioned, and they're usually used as an emotional motif for the characters--reminding them of something, making them think of the separation between words and musical beauty. Proust also just describes musical pieces unbelievably well and always connects them to emotions like surprise and higher thought. It'll be like 10 pages just about how a musical piece made someone feel in the moment.
Thank you for the great work. Some time this year I will start reading Cloud Atlas since I have it sitting on a shelf for quite a long time. Never read anything by Mitchell before.
So, maybe I won't finish this? I was hoping it would improve. It was okay in the beginning, but now that I'm in the middle it's like a chore reading it. I was hoping for so much more from this novel.
I’ve recently read and reviewed all of the David Mitchell books on my channel and I agree with you on this one, but interestingly (to me, anyway), I still liked it purely because of the multitude of connections to the previous books. There’s more connections to Utopia Avenue in the metaverse than any other book, and I had read his first novel which has the Mongolian character in it right before Utopian Avenue. So I ended up knowing that it’s poorly written… yet somehow liking it because I got so much pay off from many other novels. It was a very strange experience. Lol
The zany music bed must be expunged.
I too loved Cloud Atlas. Also loved Black Swan Green. I have all his books because I too think he's in a class by himself, but this is the book I'm least interested in. Agree with your comments about books that write about music. I appreciate your honesty and passion.
A novel that deals with music that I personally think is great is Orfeo by Richard Powers. Worth a shot I think
Not a lot about rock, it should be said.
Just curious, was the namedrop of Ken Follett in this video meant to indicate you didn't think much of his work? I ask because I was planning on reading the Pillars of the Earth later this year.
I'm not a big fan I must say, but I have friends who really loved Pillars of the Earth - do go for it if it's calling to you :)
I happened to love this one. But this is the one book where he broke his own rule. A quote from an interview in 2020.
"The danger was, and is, clear: what if someone hadn’t read Cloud Atlas? Narrative coherence of Book B cannot be contingent upon having read Book A. That’s the rule. As it happens, I have no wish to devote my creative years to writing instalments of a single mammoth work the size of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, thousands and thousands of pages where you have to read them all. I’d feel trapped. However, if you have encountered “returnees” from previous novels, their words and actions will be weighted a little differently to the experience of meeting them for the first time, and so the time you spend with them will feel a little different."
And I think I would have felt the way you did if I hadn't read Ghostwritten and Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet first. Not that this actually addresses most of the issues you had with it, but I think it's a fair point to make.
Which Mitchell's book would you recommend to someone who has never read him ?
Cloud Atlas! It's quite long and complex, but in a stimulating rather than "difficult" way - and its plot(s!) are super engaging and thrilling!
I think Ghostwritten is the most sublime example of his unusual structure style, but my favourite is The Bone Clocks. Cloud Atlas is of course wonderful, but more challenging.
As for recommendations, I remember liking Alastaire Reynolds' "At Budokan" short story, mainly because it combined rock music and dinosaurs.
And Catherynne Valente's "Space Opera" was cute: aliens I don't remember that much about but musician characters were endearing. Though maybe my standards weren't very high as I'm only a casual music listener. Idk, very tentative recommendation for this one.
Aren’t u thinking of doing another “read with me/ project” like the one you did for *The Gravity Rainbow* ?
An Against the Day one would be incredible
Eventually, I will do Against the Day ;)
@@TheBookchemist yay
Even Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath her Feet is not very good
I so enjoyed hearing your frustration over the lazy use of Italian. Would absolutely love to get your opinion on my favorite book, which is by Kate Atkinson, Life After Life. ❤️
The Book Chemist should read Life After Life if he hasn't already. Kate Atkinson is outstanding and that book is perfect.
@@irena7777777 I agree. I found it thrilling.
@@constancecampbell4610 Apparently A God In Ruins is even better but haven't read it yet. I do have it so will get to it eventually. I might start Behind The Scenes At The Museum first
@@irena7777777 I read A God in Ruins, but was expecting it to be “like” LAL, which it was not. Go into it knowing that and you will be better able to appreciate it. Loved Behind the Scenes and enjoyed her Jackson Brody novels so much. ❤️
@@constancecampbell4610 I really need to start the Jackson Brodie books. I love private investigator books so will love them i reckon
I have a question, Mattia. I know that you specialize in postmodern literature and have a great love for many postmodern authors, but what are your personal feelings towards postmodernism as a philosophy and a movement? Do you generally agree with it and view it as a positive development, or are you merely interested in studying it (a lá someone like Fredric Jameson)? As a Marxist myself, I have a lot of problems with postmodernism as a social, cultural, and academic ‘ideology.’
I definitely moved from being a bit of a "fanboy" of the movement to a more detached appreciation of it. I definitely think that, in its "purest" form, it feeds on some aspects of American culture that might not be as innocent and whimsical as I once thought. These days I wouldn't say I am "for" or "against it" - I can be more or less convinced by individual works and authors within it, rather. The greatest of the postmoderns was Thomas Pynchon after all, and I still believe that he is the most significant, insightful and complexly political writer of the last hundred years.
Just recently discovered your channel and have been binge watching and adding several of your recommendations to my reading queue. I love the fact that your reviews are overwhelmingly positive and make me want to seek out the books in question, though in this case I'm also glad for the negative review as I've been trying to decide what is the best introduction to Mitchell's work.
I love your channel, though I must say that the madcap music about halfway thru this video is kind of an unwelcome distraction from your commentary. Just sayin'...
Please keep doing what you're doing!
My first DM book was Black Swan Green. Really great book but not indicative of his usual style. It's more a coming of age novel. Excellent nonetheless
start with _The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet_ if you want something accessible, and if you want something more experimental, try _Ghostwritten._ if you enjoy the latter, move onto _Cloud Atlas_ (his masterpiece imo, but i wouldn't consider it to be among his most approachable work since it can be a little challenging at points)
@@sebastianwang670 Sounds good. I'll read both
Thanks for the recommendations!
Omg! Yes! A negative review! 🤣 I love it
Just got this on my Kindle. Was looking forward to it but seen a couple of negative reviews for it now. I have Ghostwritten so might read that first
I've read every one of Mitchell's novels and Ghostwritten, to me, comes very close to the brilliance of Cloud Atlas which is my favourite book of all times! I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did
@@Scede Me too! Thanks
@@Scede Is the thousand autumns of Jacob de zeut good?
@@irena7777777 yes! not my favourite but a good mix between "historical" fiction (it's reminiscent of the classic explorers' tales and you can actually learn a fair bit) and Mitchellesque fantasy. However, I'd argue it's the most "standard" of Mitchell's novels. But definitely worth the (rather long) read!
@@Scede Thanks. Sounds worth a try
Didn't you think the final chapter was so predictable when you listened to the roll-out of internal dialogue?
I think utopia avenue would make more sense if you had read bone clocks. Especially jaspers situation
Great work with the description.
Glad it's being appreciated!
That music though...
Great review. I’ve been searching for a good review of this book. “David Mitchell is the Megadeth of ContemporaryFiction” 😂 🤘🏽🤘🏽I can now shamelessly knock this one off my TBR. Thank you!
I’ve been struggling with this book since receiving it as a gift for Christmas 2020. To me, it reads as though it was written by a high school student. Every famous person’s is referred to by their full name at every mention. Mitchell’s attempt to sound out Dean’s accent is just wrong - he’s made a Gravesend accent sound like a country bumpkin! No on from Gravesend says “yer” instead of “you”; perhaps “yuh” but not “yer”. I’m ploughing on, but it is a dreadful book full of cliches.
I so agree!!!
Lmao this scathing review of Utopia Avenue reminded me of exactly how I felt after reading The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin. Seriously, don't read that fucking book, it's horribly written. On another note, I would love to hear you review Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin. It's a short story that has the scope of a novel, and packs a greater emotional punch than many novels I've read lately (certainly more than The City We Became).
Haha. So you felt about it this way?
I wanted to like it as I liked the original short story (it was reused in a novel as a prologue, basically) that it was based on but was, likewise, pretty disappointed. There were a couple of jokes I liked but there were also some truly embarrassing scenes and generally, yeah, it wasn't very well thought through in my opinion.
@@nikchemnyk I agree, I was excited for it to continue the short story! But then I started reading, and I literally couldn't stop rolling my eyes at some of the writing. Ugh.
@@jakobjohnson984 was it sentence by sentence level to you? For me it was mostly the general direction of the story that disappointed.
@@nikchemnyk It was both for. I thought that narrative as a whole, along with the individual sentences were quite bad.
i'm also a big fan of David Mitchell, and it seems like you and i usually end up having similar reactions to his works. i definitely felt that _Utopia Avenue_ was massively disappointing and am still genuinely baffled by the rave reviews it seems to have garnered so far online. it's a bloated, meandering, juvenile, and (sometimes) flat-out badly-written cliché of a novel that lacks any of the sophistication and imaginativeness of Mitchell's best stuff (despite Jasper's subplot, which i thought was thoroughly entertaining until its sloppy ending).
and holy shit, those celebrity cameos. every single one, without exception, was absolutely ridiculous. i can't even begin to express how much i disliked them
however, *please* don't feel deterred at all from exploring his earlier works; i honestly would be shocked if you read _Cloud Atlas_ and didn't end up absolutely loving _Ghostwritten._ also among my favourites is _The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,_ a really fun piece of historical fiction
great content as always, keep it up!
Glad I'm not the only one - and oh, I fully intend to read his early works soon!
Hahaha, this was a very good review. I had already lost interest after Brian from Bookish reviewed it.
You should read Stoner by John Williams, the most perfect novel in the English language.
Wow. The Stoner circlejerk has gone way too far.
You have revealed your lack of knowledge of other Mitchell books. Jasper's whole arch is also predictable once you know his last name and if you've read the Mitchell book with that last namer in the title. The resolution totally makes sense and is not a deus ex machina to people who have read other Mitchell books. Also, while the book is predictable to a degree, it's themes of fate, destiny, what can we change, what is set in stone, etc. is part of all Mitchell books. and is explored through each character. This is why Dean dies at the end. It was not my favorite Mitchell book, but I did enjoy it.
Wow! What a change of pace!
Yeah, it's unfortunate that the best writers are not always the most anal (thorough?) people when it comes to foreign languages. English in one of Karel Capek's plays was also pretty suspect.
This was your greatest video of 2020 so far, it made my day, thank you. :)))
PS: I won't read this novel.
Do you even lift bro?
Interesting review. Now The Guardian enjoyed it quite a lot. Somewhere in between is the truth.
There is no ultimate "truth" in matters of opinion.
I am going to give enthusiastic reviewers the benefit of the doubt and assume they had a hard deadline and just wrote the review on the assumption that it was Mitchell and the book would be good ;)
I couldn't read it, I really tried but it comes across as someone observing how music works from the outside without really understanding it, often on a pretty basic level, similar to daisy and the 6 but that had proper characters that lived within the context of music which meant you could overlook how it felt inauthentic because it was character driven, I wanted to like this book so much, I love most of DM other books but this one is a massive lemon I'm afraid
Couldn't agree more!
u look xtra cute with a beanie on............just saying