Summary vs. Review

I am going to take this moment to mock. Because it just needs to be done.

A while ago, I put Cloud Atlas (by David Mitchell) on hold at my library. They'd been talking about the movie at work, and someone said the book was good, so I figured I'd check it out. It finally came in this week, and since my current transportation situation is a bit complicated, I wanted to see if it was worth bus ride to pick it up. So, I went to the library's catalog record and looked for the summary, to see if it really did sound worth reading. This is what I got:

"Now a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant, and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles of genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian lore of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction that reveals how disparate people connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky." Cloud Atlas summary, aadl.org. 

This is not a summary. This is a collection of reviews. Reading this, I had NO idea what the book was about.  And I don't care who is in the movie--I'm looking at the book, which (shocking) doesn't have any movie stars in it. 

So, then I went to the world's favorite site, Wikipedia. There is a reason people use Wikipedia, as I am going to show you. 

"Cloud Atlas consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is revealed to be a story that is read (or observed) by the main character in the next. The first five stories are interrupted at a key moment. After the sixth story, the other five stories are returned to and closed, in reverse chronological order, and each ends with the main character reading or observing the chronologically previous work in the chain. Eventually, readers end where they started, with Adam Ewing in the nineteenth century South Pacific." Cloud Atlas, wikipedia.org.

Now, I realize that Wikipedia goes on and gives a lot more info, probably with spoilers. But at least I can get an idea of the book from their entry. And, yes, it was enough to intrigue me. (Maybe not enough to get me to the library, but the book IS on my to-read list.)

Admittedly, book summaries are not a major issue. They aren't even a major issue for me. Don't make my list of pet peeves at all (which doesn't really exist, because I'd rather not waste my time creating lists of things that bother me). But, a good summary is pretty helpful in filtering through all of the possible literature out there. Mostly, though, this was just one of those things that made me laugh, and was mockable in a harmless sort of way, so I thought I'd share.