'Why on Earth did you read 'Cloud Atlas'? No one else did.'

A legitimate question posed to me by someone regarding my Personal Statement (eek.) Why DID I read Cloud Atlas? Because we read the first two chapters in class and I found it fascinating how Mitchell could possibly link in two seemingly COMPLETELY different ideas, characters, scenarios, and actually make a novel out of it. A best selling one, mind you. It had to pose some deep and meaningful question to the reader, no? Curiosity overwhelmed me, and yes, I asked this same someone for the book and I devoured it in a matter of days. It was not the best book I ever read, it probably doesn't come in top five best either, but it was impacting. Why? Because I identified on so many different levels. So much was going on, I find a bit of every world around me: this reminded me of that and this of that and both, although completely different, are part of the same book! It's the architecture of the novel. It's utterly fantastic and brilliant and so, so sophisticated and elegant that one streams through the novel without even realizing. I fell in love with the world of the amanuensis in particular, and I fell in love with him also, just one example. Even the film isn't so bad, though the repetitions of actors for the reincarnations bothered me to the extreme. Why did I read the book? Curiosity. But like everything...