Dewey's 24-Hour Read-A-Thon: Another Book Down

Since my last update I finished The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It read fairly quickly but was anything but light. It's a very powerful account of one man's struggle with identity and place. Halfway through the novel I took an hour-long nap.

Now I'm off to read something a little more warmhearted - The School of Essential Ingredients. At 255 pages it will take me a little longer, but I'm hoping it moves quickly. I am now kicking myself for not having a graphic novel on hand...

Pages read: 283
Books completed: 2
Breaks taken: 4 (one nap, one meal break, two blog breaks)

After comparing my page count with some other participants, it's becoming painfully obvious I am not a very fast reader compared to other bloggers. But I will keep reading!

Dewey's 24-Hour Read-A-Thon: Fuel

I finished Slaughterhouse-Five and reviewed it, because I felt like it was overdue. I'm not going to do anymore reviews today and instead focus on the reading! Next up: The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I also took a little break to eat breakfast/fuel myself with some lox and berries.

I don't remember where I read about The Reluctant Fundamentalist, but it sounds quite interesting: a Pakistani's experience living in post-9/11 New York. It was shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize in 2007. At 184 pages I'm thinking I will finish it in a few hours. Until then happy reading!

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does.

I've always been a fan of Kurt Vonnegut's short stories, but this is my first full-length novel of his that I have read. Slaughterhouse-Five is a semi-autobiographical account of Kurt Vonnegut's experience in WWII told through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim. It combines the bombing of Dresden with Billy's capacity to be "unstuck" in time, time-traveling to Tralfamadore and living among aliens.

Vonnegut explores time and memory, and the human desire to explain the world around us and understand what we don't know. He writes about the human condition brilliantly, highlighting the twinkles of bliss and humor that shine through the darker occasions. He explores the human passion for life and the experience of living. But the book isn't hopeful, as we are left without any resolution or moral. Rather, Vonnegut exposes the follies and the misjudgments that humans experience as we try to cope with life, which to him, is insignificant.

If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.

The book is fractured and written in a muted language, which adds to the non-romanticized, indefinable view of war. While it very clearly satirizes war and exposes it's absurdities, it also speaks to it's inevitability. Slaughterhouse-Five raises existential questions without slapping you in the face with them. We aren't left with answers, but Vonnegut surmises through an exploration of fate and free-will that we can chose our own path, however trivial it may be.

All time is all time. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all... bugs in amber.

 Publisher: Dial Press, 1969

Dewey's 24-Hour Read-A-Thon: Let's Go!

Let the read-a-thon begin! I snoozed my alarm this morning so I didn't roll out of bed until 7:15 but now that the coffee is made and my eyes are awake I am ready to go! I am starting the day off by finishing up Slaughterhouse-Five, which is long overdue for review.

Last night I picked up some shorter titles specifically for the read-a-thon, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Hamid), The School of Essential Ingredients (Bauermeister) and Norwegian Wood (Murakami). I'll most likely pick one of these up after Slaughterhouse-Five - which has been great so far.

It is miserably gray outside and it feels like the perfect day to read. I'm going to stay holed up at home for most of the day with a book in hand. This is my first read-at-thon and I'm not sure what to expect, but I am hoping to finish 3 books. I think that's pretty realistic provided they aren't too long. Let the read-a-thon begin!

Dewey's Read-A-Thon: I'm in!

I just signed up for Dewey's 24-Hour Read-A-Thon and I'm really excited! This will be my first read-a-thon. The read-a-thon begins at noon GMT, which is 7:00am in my timezone. I'm going to hit the bookstore later this evening to stock up on some new titles and then get a good nights sleep to wake up at 7. I'm not going to go crazy and not sleep on Saturday night, but I do plan on staying up as long as I can and reading as much as I can in the 24-hour period.

Since Spring has sprung I have been pretty busy and have let my reading fall by the wayside. This is the perfect excuse to drop everything for a little while and get back to reading. I'll post updates throughout the read-a-thon and hop around to check on other participants. If you'd like to join me, head over to here to sign up.

Kurt Vonnegut in The Paris Review

As I finish up Slaughterhouse-Five and prepare to review it, I read a fantastic interview with Kurt Vonnegut via The Paris Review. The interview is from the 70's and details, among other things, Vonnegut's experience in WWII and what prompted him to write about it with the viewpoint that he did, an experience that he relates at the start of Slaughterhouse-Five:

I would try to write my war story, whether it was interesting or not, and try to make something out of it. I describe that process a little in the beginning ofSlaughterhouse Five; I saw it as starring John Wayne and Frank Sinatra. Finally, a girl called Mary O’Hare, the wife of a friend of mine who’d been there with me, said, “You were just children then. It’s not fair to pretend that you were men like Wayne and Sinatra, and it’s not fair to future generations, because you’re going to make war look good.” That was a very important clue to me. She freed me to write about what infants we really were: seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. We were baby-faced, and as a prisoner of war I don’t think I had to shave very often. I don’t recall that that was a problem.

Vonnegut also recalls the importance of diversity among authors, namely a diversity of background - that not every author should hold an English literature graduate degree:

I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.

If you get a chance I suggest you read the interview in its entirety. He explains what he believes to be the theory of writing a good story and what exactly makes a good writer. Vonnegut is truly captivating in a nonchalant, pessimistic kind of way.

April 11th marks the 4 year anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut's death. So it goes.

National Poetry Month: e.e. cummings

April is National Poetry Month which has got me thinking I don't spotlight nearly enough poetry here. I am no poetry guru, but I do enjoy reading it from time to time. My very favorite poet is e.e. cummings, followed closely by Elizabeth Bishop. I had a love affair with e.e. cummings' poetry in college and later discovered Bishop.

e.e. cummings is a non-traditional poet, experimenting with form, structure and syntax to create an innovative and fresh take on 20th century poetry. For me he is probably the most accessible avant-garde poet. He plays with language in a way that reminds me why I enjoy language so much, and that delights me. If you aren't familiar with his work I suggest you check out 100 Selected Poems which contains one of my favorite cummings poems, "who knows if the moon's":

who knows if the moon's
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky--filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited,where

always
it's
Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

Reading in Review: March

Books read: 6

Inside of a Dog - Alexandra Horowitz (2009)
The Old Man and The Sea - Ernest Hemingway (1952)
Falling Man - Don DeLillo (2007)
Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood (1988)
A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf (1929)
The Magicians - Lev Grossman (2009)

Favorite March read: Cat's Eye

Authors of color read: 0%

Non-fiction read: 33%

Non-American authors read: 33%

Books read that are older than me: 33%

Compared with last month I did better at reading non-American authors, but 2 out of 6 books still isn't very much "non-American". I'm going to try and hit 50% in April. I'm still working on my classics challenge, and since I had to bump The Age of Innocence off the tally, I'm only at 3 out of 8 completed. But Vonnegut is on my list, so it will soon be 4.

photo via weheartit