Plot Synopsis
The narrator, "Jonah", sets out to research the everyday lives of people on the day the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, but finds his life woven into a complex and absurd narrative.

My Thoughts
The two Vonnegut books I've read have both struck me as primarily anti-war texts and manifestos to man's stupidity. I approve wholeheartedly. I feel man's stupidity is most nicely bound up in the concept of granfalloon, a Bokononist concept where people believe they have a connection with others that does not in fact actually exist. Religion, Nationality, Race, Clubs and Organizations, these are all false connections. We choose to identify with particular people based on associations that are inherently meaningless, and sometimes we protect this absurd relationship in violent and stupid ways. The philosophy of Bokononism is sprinkled liberally throughout the text and is, for me, the force driving the story; without it, the story loses its essence.

Vonnegut's writing is so much like speech, his chapters so short, and his themes so intriguing that reading his books is an almost frantic activity for me. I move through them quickly but don't lose comprehension. I enjoy the quick movement, the short fast-paced sentence and chapter structure.

There is so much more to say about this book, but as always I believe that discovering the story on your own is the best bet.

Memorable Scene: Angela bundling up her two brothers and her father before they went out into the cold is a scene that affected me. Her father is useless as a parent and when her mother dies, Angela, only a teenager, has to take on responsibility for the family, giving up her life for them. This image of a young girl playing the role of mother in one of its most cliched forms - protection and caring before leaving the safety of the home - was especially poignant for me.

Memorable Quotes: Americans are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be.

What hope can there be for mankind...when there are such men...to give such playthings...to such short-sighted children as almost all men and women are? ( )

http://geekylibrarian.wordpress.com/2... ( )

Vonnegut explores the absurdities of the human creature through a plot in which the world is destroyed by our own folly. ( )

What I like best about Vonnegut is his ability to hold a mirror up to humanity and say "Will you look at what us jackasses have done now?" without flinching.

Patriotism and religion get a good skewering, but Vonnegut's light hearted, humourous touch keeps the bile from forming. The characters in this quick reading novel flit about like song birds, crossing paths, sharing melodies, and eventually alighting on a common branch.

As someone who does about half his reading while commuting, I appreciated the brief chapters. The book was well suited to start/stop reading. ( )

This is a strange book. The main character (Jonah), sets off to write a book called The Day the World Ended. It was to be about the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It wasn't to be about the bomb or the background to it, but about what everyone was doing that day when the bomb was dropped. It was also about the main who invented the bomb. A Felix Honniker. During this exploration he is severly sidetracked by people who knew felix. It leads him to a third world country where honneker's children live like kings and queens thanks to honneker's invention, ice-nine. Ice nine can make all liquid freeze at extremely warm temperatures. Its purpose was to prevent the army from marching in the mud. It would freeze the mud. The honnerker's have another weapon on their third world country island of San Lorenzo, Bokonism. Bokonism is a religion of nothingness. Vnnegut uses this religion as a commentary on the human condition. The need to have an extreme good and an extreme evil to bring balance into the word. It rings of stories like 1984 with the concept of [b:the forever war|21611|The Forever War|Joe Haldeman|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167322714s/21611.jpg|423] and fighting the eternal enemy. The government is always searching for Bokonin, and never finds him. The story is laced with referrals to this faith. In the end the book is never finished and becomes the book you are reading, although the title of the book comes true. Great passages:"If I were a younger man. I would write a history of human stupididty, and I would climbe to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow, and I would take from the ground some of the blue white poison that makes statues of men, and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.""We are gathered here friends, he said, to honor ok goonyerachamactorz rut zemocratys (Day of the One Hundred Martrys to Democracy), children dead, all dead, all murdreed in war. It is customeary on days like this to call such lost children men. I am unable to call them that for one simple reason, that in the same war in which ok goon moratoozrz tut zamoo crazya died, my own son died. My soul insists that I mourn not a man, but a child" ( )