My favourite of 2021. Simply fantastic and wildly imaginative. ( )

And what are you, [writer], but a Loose-Fish? — Melville

Hard to dispute that this is Vonnegut's best work, though what he has most in common with Céline and Dostoevsky is a pronounced un-even-ness in style.

The high-energy (already tired) prose, which the college applicant can maintain for a sentence, sustains itself for at least a chapter here, and in contrast to the usual exhausted Vonnegut style, the humor is not merely didactic. (The most aberrant "so it goes," is the infinite expansion of the sign which occurs just once: "The water was dead. So it goes." What does Vonnegut think he means by this?) Céline's Journey to the End of the Night is the same but mostly better, if not slightly less humorous, in its early war narrative (some sections of prose which Vonnegut appears to have lifted directly), although Céline appears to be under the (wrong) impression that we are interested in reading his Candide. And perhaps the best thing Dostoevsky has ever written is the account of the mock execution in The Idiot, though we are perceiving all the time, in that otherwise humorless text, that he really wanted to be writing Pierre in War and Peace. ( )

Vonnegut's masterpiece, 'Slaughterhouse-Five', is often said to be the 'amongst the 100 best novels written in the 20th century' - which is high praise, but after reading, turns out to be a little less than it deserved -if anything, this work of art deserves even more.
It is extremely hard to write my thoughts about this book in the form of a coherent review. Whatever the reason (ranging from the multitude of subjects the book handles with aplomb, or the harrowing descriptions of the sheer futility of war, or just the banal bromide 'So it goes' being turned into a haunting phrase that sticks with you long after you've finished reading the book), this book was impossible to put down, and you somehow get the feeling that you've missed quite a lot of stuff, that will be visible by the second or third read.
TL;DR - one of the best books I've ever read. Essential reading, if you're even slightly interested in works about war, writing about writing, and of course, time travel. ( )

I know I read this a while back, but I can't recall how it ends up. That means either I was underwhelmed by the book or I was too bored by it to finish it (or both.) I know it is a Great Classic and All That, but it just didn't resonate with me. ( )

Read this for 11th grade English class. All I can remember is something about aliens. Needless to say, I hated this book. Maybe I just didn't "get it." ( )