David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas novel: Discussion, podcast, and book club guide.

The Audio Book Club Discusses David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas

The Audio Book Club Discusses David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas

Slate
The Audio Book Club
Discussing new and classic works.
Nov. 2 2012 11:04 PM

The Audio Book Club on Cloud Atlas

Our critics discuss David Mitchell’s 500-year puzzle epic.

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To listen to the Audio Book Club discussion of Cloud Atlas, click the arrow on the player below.

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Are we really all connected? Despite Hurricane Sandy, Slate Book Review editor Dan Kois, Slate culture critic Meghan O’Rourke, and Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon connect (over phone and ISDN line) to discuss David Mitchell’s epic 2004 novel Cloud Atlas, now the basis for the much-discussed movie by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer. Which of the novel’s six stories was best? Which was way better in the movie? And is this long, engrossing, enjoyable novel literature—or fuzzy philosophical hoo-hah?

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Next month’s Audio Book Club selection is Zadie Smith’s NW, the formally adventurous story of a downtrodden London neighborhood and four people who grew up there. Please read the book and join us on Dec. 1 for our discussion.

Visit our Audio Book Club archive page for a complete list of the more than 50 books we’ve discussed over the years. Or you can listen to any of our previous club meetings through our iTunes feed or through the player above.

See all the pieces in this month’s Slate Book Review.
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Podcast produced by Abdul Rufus and Andy Bowers.

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and the author of Sticks and Stones.

Dan Kois edits and writes for Slate’s human interest and culture departments. He’s the co-author, with Isaac Butler, of The World Only Spins Forward, a history of Angels in America, and is writing a book called How to Be a Family.

Meghan O’Rourke is Slate’s culture critic and an advisory editor. She was previously an editor at the New Yorker. The Long Goodbye, a memoir about her mother’s death, is now out in paperback.