The Reading Goals So far

This post is a little different than most of I've written. So far this year, I've read less then I would have hoped, only twenty-five of the forty books I had as a goal. Puts me a little behind, unfortunately. At the moment, I'm reading Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami and his books always seem to take a little bit, since there is so much depth to his tellings. This will be the last book in my "Group Reading Challenge" from Good Reads. It also counts towards my personal goal to read all of Murakami's books available in English, this is number seven out of the eleven that I own.

After Dance, Dance, Dance I'm not sure what I want to read. A mystery? A fantasy? A young adult? A fiction? Oh the choices are endless! I could even be daring and borrow one from the library, though that isn't something I do often. I tend to go to the local book shops see something I may read and say "oh why not buy it". Tends to happen quite often with me, buying yet more books when I've not finished the ones I have already. I really cannot help myself, I'm quite the book junkie.

I find being a book addict to be rather harmless addiction as these things go. If there was such thing as Book-Addicts Anonymous, it would become a book club within about three sessions... if that long. When I meet someone that says they hate to read, I feel very sorry for them. They miss out on all the grand adventures. I'm twenty-eight and have already been on several sea voyages, been under water exploring. I've traveled to Sherwood, Oxford, Paris, Tokyo, Hongkong, Middle Earth and Shangrilah. I've fought dragons, defended kingdoms, saved the universe at least twice, and solved countless murders. All those stories and so many people won't know such grand adventures! Truly, its a depressing thought.

Lizard by Banana Yoshimoto

Lizard -- 4 Stars

This is a collection of short stories, though calling them novellas would be a better description. The stories are strange and surreal in a way that I have only seen from Japanese authors. Its hard to describe them in a way that anyone could understand, but I can try.

There are four stories and they vary on topics from love to dreams, the past and the present. I enjoyed the shorts and will indeed pick up more novels of this author. I wish I could write more by way of review but there is just no way to put into words how lovely these stories were!

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse Five

Rated- *****
I read this book earlier this year and I have to say it was rather incredible. Personally, I don't care for war, I think that murder in any way is morally reprehensible. That being said, Vonnegut has written a great fictionalized biography. It is both funny and painful, beautiful and sickening. I was not sure if such a thing can be accomplished, but Mr Vonnegut has proved me very wrong.

Written when the Cold War was in it's height, Vonnegut showed the world how he survived World War II, similar to the manner that the crew of M*A*S*H had in Korea. The brutal honesty of this novel makes you hate the idea of war being anything but a horrible idea. He shows us all that there is no glory in going to war, only nightmares and death.  We are taken for a short walk through his memories and are shown that there is no such thing as a fair war.

Slaughterhouse Five has been touted as the first of the anti-war novels. I'm not sure if this is true, but certainly was the first one I'd read. And I am glad of that. I don't think any other novel could have captured the true grit and horror that is war.

While at times, he seems to ramble on and digress, Vonnegut uses this as a way to compare "normal" to "horror". Sometimes they are starkly different, sometimes they are reflections of each other. There are moments in which we, as readers, are unsure where the story is going and why, but then no one really knows their path. I believe that Vonnegut was trying to show us that. To me, he succeeded with flying colours