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DID NOT FINISH: 10%
I've read a few other Vonnegut novels. I have a feeling I'll have to come back to this one once I've read a few more.
There's a clever premise here about being in the middle of a Groundhog Day scenario, but it's muddled with anecdotes he seems not to have been able to fit anywhere else. I noticed that this book came out the year before I was born. This means that the author wrote in an era completely different than my own and I was initially interested in hearing his thoughts. This fascination quickly vanished.
I think the thing that made me stop reading was the the crotchety old man attitude of "all books are good, all television is bad". There isn't really any nuance in his argument at all, which I guess makes sense coming from a novelist. As an avid fan of both literature and "television" (which i think nowadays can be expanded to things like modern video games, youtube, and things Vonnegut couldn't have known about in 1996), that argument really doesn't hold any water to me (comparing television to nuclear weaponry was a little much). He says that television does not let you become "immobilized in a congregation of rapt fellow human beings". Anyone who has had a live viewing event at their house probably vehemently disagrees with this statement.
As I got through the few pages I did read, it slowly felt more and more like I was listening to a nursing home resident's take on the modern world. I'm not opposed to coming back to this book, but I think I'll have to read more of his earlier works to see if I can get into his head a little more before I come back.
TLDR: if you haven't read much vonnegut before, start with some of his earlier works.
There's a clever premise here about being in the middle of a Groundhog Day scenario, but it's muddled with anecdotes he seems not to have been able to fit anywhere else. I noticed that this book came out the year before I was born. This means that the author wrote in an era completely different than my own and I was initially interested in hearing his thoughts. This fascination quickly vanished.
I think the thing that made me stop reading was the the crotchety old man attitude of "all books are good, all television is bad". There isn't really any nuance in his argument at all, which I guess makes sense coming from a novelist. As an avid fan of both literature and "television" (which i think nowadays can be expanded to things like modern video games, youtube, and things Vonnegut couldn't have known about in 1996), that argument really doesn't hold any water to me (comparing television to nuclear weaponry was a little much). He says that television does not let you become "immobilized in a congregation of rapt fellow human beings". Anyone who has had a live viewing event at their house probably vehemently disagrees with this statement.
As I got through the few pages I did read, it slowly felt more and more like I was listening to a nursing home resident's take on the modern world. I'm not opposed to coming back to this book, but I think I'll have to read more of his earlier works to see if I can get into his head a little more before I come back.
TLDR: if you haven't read much vonnegut before, start with some of his earlier works.