With the arrival of the film version of Cloud Atlas, there's sure to be increased interest in the 2004 novel by David Mitchell on which the film is based. From my perspective, that's great - this novel should be reintroduced, so that readers who have not yet delved into the extravagant prose and complexity of plot and language of this extraordinary story can experience a truly original work of literature.

I've heard that the novel can be compared in structure to a Russian matryoshka doll: opened in layers until the center piece is reached, then reassembled  piece by piece to form the whole.

And the novel's structure does have that kind of symmetry. The novel is the clever blending of six novellas, wildly divergent in setting and tone, but with a common thread that emerges at crucial junctures in each story. The first is the story of a nineteenth century American, Adam Ewing,  whose innocence and faith in humanity is tested on a voyage through the south Pacific. The subsequent tales are set in Belgium in the 1930s, California in the 1970s, present-day Britain, Korea of the future (the 23rd century?), and, at the book's center, a post-apocalyptic Hawaii where civilization is reduced to a few small agricultural tribes surviving in one of the few areas of the world that has not be made uninhabitable by pollution and the depletion of natural resources. After this central piece, the other stories unfold in reverse order until we finally return to the nineteenth century and discover the fate of the Adam in the middle of the Pacific.

If you want a challenging read with beautiful prose and a timeless theme of hope in the midst of man's inhumanity to man, I recommend Cloud Atlas: Available in print, and as an e-book from San José Public Library.

View the trailer for the film

The Harry Potter series has been chosen by the children at Almaden as their favorite.  In the past month or so, we had our own election of sorts, and we have just tallied our results.  The numbers are in: Harry Potter received 14 votes out of the 120 titles entered.   Children were asked to nominate their favorite titles: some nominated up to 5 titles.  Of the top five, the other titles are: Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, Hunger Games, Swindle, and Geronimo Stilton.  Only one title is a single title, Swindle, by Gordon Korman.  Here is the run down:

Harry Potter           14

Percy Jackson          12

Hunger Games       10

Swindle                      8

Geronimo Stilton      7 

Happy Reading!  If you haven't tried one of these titles, perhaps you may be enticed to try one, since so many children have read them and can attest to their quality.  One caveat: Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Lightning Thief)  and The Hunger Games are considered teen titles in other words for 6th, 7th and 8th graders.

Seraphine is a beautiful, poignant French film that explores the life and art work of Seraphine Louis.  Orphaned by the age of seven, Seraphine led a humble, isolated life working as a house cleaner in Senlis, France at the turn of the 20^thCentury.   Without friends or family, Seraphine found solace in solitary walks in the countryside and prayer in church.  Her one secret passion in life was an obsessive,  spiritual urge to paint what she experienced and saw in nature during her long walks in the meadows and forests surrounding Senlis. Seraphine spent her evenings painting flowers and fruits  using paint that she made from plant dyes and melted candle wax.  Unable to purchase canvas or fine paint brushes, Seraphine painted on discarded slabs of wood and often used her fingers to apply paint.   It was by chance that in 1912 that one of her wooden slab paintings - a still-life of apples - was discovered by Wilhelm Uhde, a German art collector who happened to be visiting one of the homes where Seraphine worked as a house cleaner.  Uhde was astonished to learn that the artist was the strange and reclusive domestic, Seraphine.  Uhde befriended Seraphine and supported her artistic efforts until WWI erupted and Uhde left France.  He reunited with Seraphine after the war and encouraged her once again to continue with her painting.  Although Seraphine died impoverished and institutionalized in a mental asylum, her work lives on in the Musee Maillol in Paris, the Musee d’art de Senlis, and the Musee d’art naïf in Nice.  Seraphine was directed by Martin Provost.  In 2009 this film won seven Cesar Awards, (the French equivalent of the Academy Awards ), including Best Film and Best Actress for Yolande Moreau.   

The Black Count is a biography of Alexandre Dumas. No, not the novelist: his father. Born the mixed race son of a disgraced minor noble and his slave mistress, Alex Sr. grew up in a fugitive family in the backwoods of the island that would become Haiti. His father eventually returned to France, which voyage was funded by selling Alex’s mother and his siblings back into slavery, but favorite son Alex remained free and came with the old count as he schemed to reclaim the family fortune. Alex Sr. thus arrived in France at a transitional period in which blacks could be owned as slaves, but there were no legal limitations upon free blacks. When the family fortune proved to be largely a scam, Alex Sr. joined the army, where he proved to be such a fierce fighter and able leader of men that he was rapidly promoted to general in command of one of the French armies which were fighting to spread the revolution to the rest of Europe (whether the rest of Europe wanted it or not). The elder Dumas had quite a stellar military career, and has only been overshadowed because of the even greater success of his fellow general and personal rival, Napoleon.

And that’s only the part of this book that takes place before the strange events of Alex Sr.’s later life, upon which misadventures Alex Jr. would go on to write some of the world’s most beloved and enduring adventure novels.