cloud cuckoo land

this is a book about books, and as someone who loves books, it was easy to love cloud cuckoo land. with the multiple different timelines, perspectives, and eras, this book was an adventure of its own. 

i have to admit that the beginning of cloud cuckoo land is relatively slow. but then again there are five unique characters in their own respective lives at different points in time that individually require characterization, development, and plots. each character was so wonderfully crafted, it made sense why some parts of the book would appear slower than others. 

with that being said, i’m really grateful that i was able to stick it out, because doerr ties everything together so beautifully at the end of the novel. all of the characters' stories intertwine with one another despite them living in completely different time periods, and it is all through a single book. in both the real world and cloud cuckoo land, books are capable of bringing people together, people who otherwise would have had absolutely nothing to do with each other. and that's the beauty of literature!

specifically looking at the fictional book in this story, also named cloud cuckoo land, it is an homage to the classics and their ability to persist through time from the ages of the roman empire to the vietnam war to futuristic space ships. its invincible. while they still require protection and care, if there is one thing that is capable of lasting the test of time, it's stories.

cloud cuckoo land also has other themes that involved war, innocence, sexuality, otherness, and more, further illustrating how these children and eventually adults, were in need of a comfort that only books could offer. 

“But books, like people, die. They die in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants. If they are not safeguarded, they go out of the world. And when a book goes out of the world, the memory dies a second death.”