2014 Book Goal: 52 (mostly non-fiction)
2014 Books Read: 12 (67% non-fiction)

I don’t know what prompted me to read Slaughterhouse Five or how I managed to live this long without reading it.  I’m not saying it was such a great book that I should have read it earlier, just that it is an American classic and I’m just surprised I never did.

First, I had no idea it was even science fiction.  I had a lot of confusion between Slaughterhouse Five and the Jungle.   I just assumed both were exposes on the meat-packing industry.  Being an avid science fiction fan, I had certainly heard about Kurt Vonnegut, but just never figured it out until now.

I was surprised to discover it was indeed sci-fi and in fact, it felt a lot like Douglas Adams’  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when the Tralfamadorians showed up.  I was also intrigued enough about the story of the Dresden firebombing to actually do some subsequent research into that.

As a vehicle to inform the public about what allied forced did in an unpublicized segment of World War II, it does a great job.  As a narrative for a quirky sci-fi adventure story, it does a great job.  As a precursor to the current trend of films jumping all over in their timeline, it was revolutionary.    If it were just one of those things though, I would have said, “meh,” and moved on.  Delivering on all these however, I really enjoyed it.

I think I may look into some more classics I may have overlooked.