Books Worth Reading

Image via Wikipedia

Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut (1969)

Five stars!

It took me this long to read Vonnegut’s classic time travel novel—about Billy Pilgrim, who has become unstuck in time—and of course I now wonder why I waited. I was inspired to finally pick up this novel by the episode of Lost in which Desmond similarly becomes unstuck in time. I was surprised to find that the novel is not only an exploration of time travel but also a potent anti-war novel and even a fair piece of Zen Buddhist musing. After all, if every moment in your life happens simultaneously and no moment can be changed, living in the moment and accepting all states of life—including death—becomes the only option.

So it goes.

Plenty of people have written much better things about Slaughterhouse Five, so I won’t attempt to, but instead will point you to some good links:

• Slaughterhouse-Five Page on Vonnegut Web
• Slaughterhouse-Five Film Page at IMDB
• Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five (lecture)
• “The Birth of Slaughterhouse-Five” (article in Salon)
• New York Times Book Review