Slow Reading is Hard To Do

Reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince slowly is really hard! It's not even July yet and I'm almost done. I think to myself, "I'll only read two chapters tonight." Then "Oh, just one more!" So I might have to just finish it and maybe read it again right before the other one comes out. Yes, in fact, I am a freak that way. Reading Freak!! Ahem. In the mean time, I thought I would read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. (Oh yes, it doevtails so nicely with Harry Potter!) I have never read Vonnegut and Kurt (my husband, not Mr. Vonnegut himself, who is dead. So it goes.) has been asking me to read this one for a while now. I also heard part of an interview with him talking about the book and about the bombing of Dresden. I didn't know that he had said he was the only person who profited from the bombing of Dresden (because of the book, Slaughterhouse-five). The bombing didn't affect the outcome of the war, didn't make any difference except to kill almost 30,000 people, an unnecessary massacre before the war's end. I know very little about Vonnegut's work and expected it to be difficult to get into. I was afraid it would be like Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 which I found to be a very challenging book to read. However, Slaughterhouse-five is easy to read. This doesn't make it simple or light. The images and feelings presented are intense and sad and brutal. It is an anti-war book, don't forget. I'm about 2/3 of the way done and am glad to be reading it. Thank you Kurt and thank you Kurt. When I'm done with Slaughterhouse-Five, I think I will pull A Man Without A Country out of my reading stack and finally read it. I bought it after seeing Mr. Vonnegut on The Daily Show (2005). Time to get to know the man and his work better.