The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Easily tops the list as not just my favourite read of last year, but of all time. I discovered Vonnegut in my 3rd year of uni, and amongst reading for various essays and my dissertation, I made my way through every book of his our uni library had to offer. This was one of the very last, and in my eyes, one of his very best works.
The witty, satirical mind of K.V.J. is sharply at work throughout the text, offering powerfully emotional insights into beautifully eccentric characters, whilst managing to warm my heart with his enduring positive outlook. It’s a sci-fi novel that doesn’t read like a sci-fi novel. It engulfed me so completely I once had to stop reading when I found myself crying on my bus ride home. I can’t rave about it enough!
n.b. as the copy I read was uni property, my wonderful boyfriend bought me my own copy for my last birthday :)
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“ He never had a kid, and never owned a gun. He owned a lot of books, though, and kept buying new ones, and giving me those he thought were particularly well done. It was an ordeal for him to find this book or that one, so he could read some particularly magical passage aloud to me. Here’s why: His wife Aunt Raye, who was said to be artistic, arranged his library according to the size and colour of the volumes, and stairstep style.
So he might say of a collection of essays by his hero H. L. Mencken, ‘I think it was green, and about this high.’
— Kurt Vonnegut on his Uncle Alex, from ‘Timequake’.
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“ I told young John Hickenlooper a joke his dad told me. It worked like this: His dad would say to me, no matter where we were, ‘Are you a member of the Turtle Club?’ I had no choice but to bellow at the top of my lungs, ‘YOU BET YOUR ASS I AM!’
I could do the same thing to his dad. On some particularly solemn and sacred occasion, such as the swearing in of new fraternity brothers, I might whisper to him, ‘Are you a member of the Turtle Club?’ He would have no choice but to bellow at the top of his lungs, ‘YOU BET YOUR ASS I AM!’
— Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut
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“ ‘So-’ said billy gropingly, ‘I suppose that the idea of preventing war on Earth is stupid, too.’
‘Of course.’
‘But you do have a peaceful planet here.’
‘Today we do. On other days we have wars as horrible as any you’ve ever seen or read about. There isn’t anything we can do about them, so we simply don’t look at them. We ignore them. We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments- like today at the zoo. Isn’t this a nice moment?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.’
— Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
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“ I am a monopolar depressive descended from monopolar depressives. That’s how come I write so good.
— Kurt Vonnegut, ‘Timequake’
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“ What hit me really hard that night, though, was the character Emilys farewell in the last scene, after the mourners have gone back down the hill to their village, having buried her. She says, “Good-by, good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners… Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking… and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths… and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? - every, every minute?
— Kurt Vonnegut on ‘Our Town’ by Thornton Wilder, in ‘Timequake’.
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