Book Review – Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

July 13, 2021 Ryan2 Comments

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, originally published in 1969. Considered an American classic and among the world’s great antiwar novels, the story is centered around the firebombing of Dresden, Germany during World War II. It follows Billy Pilgrim, a U.S. Army private, who embarks upon a strange odyssey while struggling to survive as a prisoner of war. Billy’s consciousness becomes unstuck in time, sending him to various points in his own past and future, including his married life after the war, waning years after surviving a serious accident, and the period of time he spent as an exhibit in an alien zoo. Through it all, he always returns to his horrific experiences during the war.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – June 30, 2021

June 30, 2021 Ryan2 Comments

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

I’m between books at the moment, but technically still at the beginning of Hope is the Thing with Feathers: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. I haven’t read any more of it since last week, though, so I’ve got nothing to say this week!

Recently Finished

I read through all of Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut since last week. Hooray for me, sticking to yet another reading deadline. I’m on a small roll here. So, at first I thought I had remembered very little of what interested me about this book enough to buy it. As it turns out, I did vaguely remember the bit about the aliens and time travel. This was an excellent novel, one of those books that you start reading and immediately recognize as 𝐿𝒾𝓉𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓉𝓊𝓇𝑒. That’s not always a fun thing to run into, but I really enjoyed reading this book too. It was so darkly humorous, dryly matter-of-fact, and utterly bleak. One passage actually hit me like a surprise brick too. An unexpectedly strong emotional response is always welcome. This is one of those books that I’m not sure how to go about reviewing. It would feel a little presumptuous. I still may, I haven’t made up my mind yet.

Reading Next

I still intend to start reading Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters by Eric Powell et al soon, especially with my having read through three novels since my last comic book now. In accordance with my recently laid out summer reading TBR, however, I am also going to start The High Republic: Into the Dark by Claudia Gray soon. It hasn’t been all that long since I last read a Star Wars novel, but I was good about staying on top of my challenges in June, so I welcome the detour. With the follow-up to Light of the Jedi having also arrived at my doorstep the other day, I want to make sure I stay on top of all the books coming out in this series.

Until next week, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – June 23, 2021

June 23, 2021 Ryan2 Comments

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Since bookstores opened up again where I live, I decided to do a little book shopping and came home with Hope is the Thing with Feathers: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. I typically don’t read a lot of poetry; most of what I have I read for school. Nevertheless, I like the idea of trying to read through poetry from time to time, without the expectation of having to dissect or criticize what I’m reading. Admittedly, my eyes glazed over while I was reading a few poems, so I had to reread them a few times. Not knocking her at all, poetry’s just a different beast for me. Some of these were really lovely too, though. I guess some of these will just be harder for me to parse than others. I’ll try not to sweat it too much.

Recently Finished

Alien River of Pain Over the weekend I finished reading Alien: River of Pain by Christopher Golden. While it might be the best written of this little trilogy of Alien novels, I don’t think this one is my favourite after all. That honour narrowly goes to Sea of Sorrows. I did enjoy this book, but I think that has more to do with how much I like the film Aliens than the actual story here. I’m mostly proud of finishing this novel so quickly; reading quotas really are working well for me. The characters were enjoyable enough, with some decent standout moments, but there were some annoying contrivances for the sake of tying it to the film that made some things a little dumb too. I’m walking away from this trilogy still curious about reading more Alien books, though, so it’s got that going for it. I should have a review up soon.

Reading Next

Godzilla Kingdom of Monsters Vol1 I still very much intend to start Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut within the next day or so. With a good week left in June, I should be able to get it done by next Wednesday. In terms of comic books, I think I will start reading the three-volume series Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters by Eric Powell et al. I don’t have any new Berserk to read at the moment, and I’m actually decently caught up on most of my Star Wars comics, so it’s time I read something a little different. I’m not expecting the deepest of storytelling, but it’ll hopefully be a fun monster romp.