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Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr
Jul. 22nd, 2014 07:01 pmOkay wow I'm not sure exactly where to start in discussing this book? It's very good, and pretty weird (although actually not as weird as I thought it was going to be), and also very famous. I remember it from high school days when I helped reorganize the collection of books the English department owned; I remember thinking at the time that it looked like it might actually be worth reading, unlike a lot of the books a high school English department has.
Cue the passing of many years in which I did not read it.
Then a recent episode of Crash Course Literature was about Slaughterhouse-Five, and - okay, here's the thing. Generally speaking when I watch Crash Course Literature episodes about books I've read, I disagree with the majority of the stuff John Green says. He's just.... so literarily pretentious? And the things he thinks are important to talk about are often very different than the things I think are important to talk about. So it's always odd watching Literature episodes about books I HAVEN'T read, because everything Green says sounds very plausible and he's very passionate about what he says, but when I remember what I usually think about his opinions of books I have to be suspicious. Regardless, when I watched the episode about Slaughterhouse-Five, I was really intrigued by the book, so I decided to put it on my to-read list. And when I was wandering a used bookstore not long after and saw a super-cheap copy, I picked it up.
And then last week a friend was over for dinner and saw my copy of Slaughterhouse-Five sitting out and said some vastly complimentary things about it so I decided to bump it up on my priority list.
And now I've read it and I don't know what to say about it. ( In which I say things about it. )
Cue the passing of many years in which I did not read it.
Then a recent episode of Crash Course Literature was about Slaughterhouse-Five, and - okay, here's the thing. Generally speaking when I watch Crash Course Literature episodes about books I've read, I disagree with the majority of the stuff John Green says. He's just.... so literarily pretentious? And the things he thinks are important to talk about are often very different than the things I think are important to talk about. So it's always odd watching Literature episodes about books I HAVEN'T read, because everything Green says sounds very plausible and he's very passionate about what he says, but when I remember what I usually think about his opinions of books I have to be suspicious. Regardless, when I watched the episode about Slaughterhouse-Five, I was really intrigued by the book, so I decided to put it on my to-read list. And when I was wandering a used bookstore not long after and saw a super-cheap copy, I picked it up.
And then last week a friend was over for dinner and saw my copy of Slaughterhouse-Five sitting out and said some vastly complimentary things about it so I decided to bump it up on my priority list.
And now I've read it and I don't know what to say about it. ( In which I say things about it. )
