"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."
Yes, I just finished Kurt Vonnegut's great "science fiction infused anti-war novel" 'Slaughterhouse Five' - also known as "The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death."
I'm sure I've read it before, and likely started it more times than that. Still, it seemed new enough. It's just a couple hundred pages, and flows well. I like his writing style - at least in this - and it was quite the beautiful time to be lost inside of for a few days.
I admit, I am fairly ignorant of classic literature, great writers, and wouldn't know a masterpiece if it punched me in the nose. But I know what I like, and what I don't. A friend and I were just commiserating thru email about how some books just don't "click." And you really just have to put them down and forget about it. When you stumble onto one that does catch your imagination though... hold tight and read on! It can be a bit like going insane for a bit (or vice-versa).
At any rate, I LOVE this book. It's the type of stuff I can't even dream of writing, and KV is the type writer I can't imagine being... as much as I'd like to be. Somehow reading books like this makes me think I AM writing them though, or living them.
So, that part of my life is over. For now.
I wish I were more well-read. I also wish it just didn't take so stinking long to become so.
"...and I'm an old fart with his memories and his Pall Malls."
That's probably why I should never become a writer: I'd have to drink whiskey and smoke cigarettes to fit into my mind. Then I'd for sure lose it.
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“However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him—” -1 Corinthians 2:9
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