Satiiri, mutta onko kuitenkaan. En tiedä tökkikö suomennos vai mikä, mutta en nyt päässyt tämän huumorin kyytiin. ( )

Re-read in 2024. Not one of my favorites. A satirical look at class, money, society, love, sanity and belonging (or not), this one had an overriding mood of melancholy that left me feeling empty. Maybe that was the author's goal. If so, he succeeded admirably. ( )

On a roll with good books this year. Maybe more reason to continue cracking through my backlog.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is a humorous-yet-depressing novel about greed and politics in America, starring the troubled main character Eliot Rosewater, who finds a way to love even the most "useless" of people, in an economical sense. Obviously, this is troubling to his Senator father, as well as an outsider who attempts to use his love for the people as justification to call him insane in the courts. Very direct in its message and heavy-handed in its themes as Vonnegut tends to be. Such an engaging read that I essentially finished it in a day.

God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater... ( )

2023-10-15: I didn't get far and I'll come back to it but it wasn't the escape I needed from Awake.

2023-11-10: I think it's a recurring thing with Vonnegut that I dislike his books at the beginning and then love them further in. This book is genius. Elliot is the Buddha and Jesus and Lao Tzu all rolled up in a wrapper of compassion. He sees that the bullshit is bullshit where everyone else thinks it's gold. He cares about people just because they're people and because of that everyone thinks he's insane.

2023-11-19: I'm kind ambivalent about this one. The whole story was about how insane Elliot was because he treats people with kindness and respect. Even Elliot thinks he's insane. He certainly doesn't seem to see that he's right and it's the rest of the world that's broken. Elliot may be the only person that Elliot doesn't treat with compassion. ( )

My Vonnegut reread continues. This was one of my favorite books of his when I was a teen. It holds up remarkably well. What it said about the world then held true and magnified to a horrifying level. It is still one of my favorite and if you have never read it I would give it a shot. ( )