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Post by Sprague Dawley on Oct 25, 2024 11:12:23 GMT
Mother Night (1962)
Raced through this. Completely radio rental nazi spy satire in the same vein as Catch 22 but actually better than that.
God knows why Slaughterhouse 5 got a billion plaudits and not this.
Author prolly laboured laboriously over this novel but the rambling glorious mess of a thing reads as if he got high as fuck and churned all 200 pages out in one sitting.
10/10
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Oct 25, 2024 11:18:04 GMT
Welcome To The Monkey House (1968)
Early 50's and 60's collection of his short stories.
Stellar, bonkers, radio rental, absolutely brilliant. Dystopian. In fact while reading I could see most of the tales playing out as stand-alone Black Mirror style vignettes. Then I read there already was a wee series on Canadian telly in the early 90's. Hosted by the man himself. Better not have dropped the ball, Canaderp.
9/10
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Oct 28, 2024 1:14:50 GMT
God Bless You, Mr Rosewater (1965)
Another mad, maddening and madly fun Vonnegut outing that again reads as if the author got drunk and/or high, started typing out any old shit, made it up as he went, chundered the whole thing out in a week, and that was that.
InMyIHomo, Eliot Rosewater shouldve been one of the greatest characters in all of literatrurrre. Instead, this book is a deranged and choppy mess. Characters flit in then are never heard from again. It's a fun mess but still, it finished abruptly after 188 pages leaving you wondering wFT just happened. It is ALL loose ends. This book needed to be 3x longer.
8/10
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Oct 28, 2024 1:20:26 GMT
The Sirens of Titan. (1959)
1959 ffs.
That shit was a LONG time ago.
His 2nd novel.
God knows what the reception for this totally bonkers book wouldve been back then. The USA was still fresh and hopeful. Before Nam. Before JFK ffs. Man had never been to the moon and could make up any old shit about space, who the fuck knew.
Again for Mr Vonnegut, this book barely makes a lick of sense.
Again, it seems 100% made up on the fly with not a scrap of fore-planning.
That's fine. I just went with the flow of daft unpredictability and the general air of LOLfuck.
8/10
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Oct 28, 2024 1:27:26 GMT
Timequake (1997)
1997 and his rep seemed to allow any self-indulgent unedited twaddle to get published.
This book is just nonsense.
It has a couple of nifty soundbyte quotes but someone should have sat the old coot down and told him "Sir, the words on the pages of this book are completely incomprehensible once they've left your brain and entered the page".
Maybe he shouldn't have marketed it as a "novel". It's more a memoir of zingers.
4/10
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