Book One-Two

YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!

Well, that was classy. Ahem.

I've finished Book One of 2011! Just in time, too. Phew! Slaughterhouse-Five, you were a joy. Thank you for being so short and sporadic and bipolar and unique. If it weren't for all of that, I would not have finished you on time.

I'm really not sure what to say about this book, other than Kurt Vonnegut is a genius and I can't begin to explain why. His writing is on a whole other level (a fourth dimension, if you will). So it goes.

What did I get from this book? The fact that dialogue isn't essential. You can weave a story with very little. And that you can play around with narrators. Vonnegut hid is narrator for the majority of the story, bringing the "I" in only when necessary, which was very, very little, to remind us that the narrator was there all along, an (almost) silent witness to the life of one Billy Pilgrim. Finally, can I be unstuck in time, like the Tralfamadorians? Pretty please? I want to see life, all of life, in one glorious instance. I want to read their books:

"There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time."

Yes, please.

Well, this blog is quite disordered, but I think that is fitting for a book such as this. For Billy Pilgrim lived his life all hither and thither. And, according to Tralfamadorians, time does not exist in a line, a plane, or anything resembling order. It exists all at once, in a single, thrumming, luminous haze.

Glorious.

Book Two: Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson
Start Date: January 13th, 2011
End Date: January 24th, 2011