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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" ( )

Wow. This book is perfect.

I know this is only the second Vonnegut novel I’ve ever read but I can’t imagine anything topping this. I would love to be proven wrong, though. This novel follows the narrator and the events that occur as a result of him attempting to write a book about the events that occurred on the day that the atomic bomb was dropped. He winds up studying a scientist who, besides being credited as the father of the atomic bomb, also invented a substance called ‘ice-nine’ which has the capability of turning all liquid that touches it into a solid (obviously, should this fall into any major body of water, it would cause the end of the world, more or less, by turning the world’s water supply into a solid).

He is brought to the island of San Lorenzo, where he learns about the religion of Bokononism, which, invented by Bokonon (a man who, by chance, found himself ashore on this terrible little island with another man, who became San Lorenzo’s first dictator), is founded on the principle that all religions in the world (including Bokononism) is made up of lies and these lies make people happy. Bokononism is banned on the island, despite the fact that the dictator himself is a follower of Bokononism, based on the idea that if the people have to suffer for their beliefs they will appreciate them more.

There is more, that’s a very brief, very unworthy summary of this book. You really need to read it in order to pick up on all the subtle ironies and satire in the novel. I think the most shocking thing about this novel is the fact that so much of it rings perfectly true (which must be the point, I suppose!). Even though the story is interesting and entertaining, it’s really all of the things that the storyline demonstrates that makes the book hit home. ( )