'Slaughterhouse V' and 'War with the Newts'...

Hallo liebe friends of Aunt Gwenda (and possibly mom and Isabelle)! Thought I'd throw something out here too... my, but blogs do seem to be my favorite thing, of late. While I barely have time to read (since I always feel like I should be doing something else (so why do I spend time on blogs?), I have the following recommendations:

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE: Many have probably read this as required reading, but since all I got were things like "The Awakening" (hated) and "Tess of the D'Ubervilles" (loved... though I was the only one in my class like these as such, and have read neither since then)... blah blah blah, I did not read it. It is the last book I read though, and amazed me how obviously classic it is despite being, dare I say, really freaking weird. It also interested me a lot due to the German factor, but really... Vonnegut just has a very clear way of illustrating things.

WAR WITH THE NEWTS: A fantastic book that probably NO ONE has read, which Grandma Selby had to special order some time back and only let me read it on the plane back to Deutschland with the promise of returning it at Christmas. I loved this book because it spans all sides of "Newt" issue, from small time to country relevant. I also don't want to talk about what it's about, because it's just so interesting and new! In addition, it's written by a Czech author and translated, though keeps a lot of different language tidbits throughout the entire book (hence, good that smart women are reading this). I loved it.

In closing, I would like to quote my Selby grandma, who was talking about how she recently read a book that was ok, but lacked something, and how she used to always read such classic books where she felt like not a word was wasted. That stuck out to me. That every word had relevance and meaning, otherwise it would not be there. It also reminded me of another quote that is possibly from Kurt Vonnegut (but I don't remember) saying something like, "if you can take a word out, do it."