Slaughterhouse-Five is plangent & repetitive in cadence & theme. And while I'm not just talking about "So it goes," that, of course, will be the representative & most easily recognizable example for most. Taking nothing away from its novel, creative, & clever construction, I'll admit that it seems kind of imitable to me today. It had a far bigger impact on me in high school; I found more meaning in it back then. (Note: This switcheroo is less jarring than recently having rewatched Pump Up the Volume and finding myself sympathizing with the parents.) This time around, I just find Slaughterhouse-Five kind of unique & pleasing. So here we have a book Classic Bitch could recommend to ANYONE.
Who HASN'T read Slaughterhouse-Five before? If you're raising your hand, go out & get a copy right now. Although it's unusual—history, comedy, & science fiction all in one—it's superaccessible writing. Due to its parsed narrative structure, there are many stopping points (even per page), which means that this book is both easy to set down and to pick back up. Then again, you might tear right through it in one sitting. When I had knocked it off this time, I wanted to start rereading it immediately right over from the beginning—it's another looping story, like Invisible Man—but then it occurred to me that one could actually open Slaughterhouse-Five to ANY page & 'begin' reading it. These perhaps backhanded compliments amount to nothing less than 'beachniness,' and it's summer at this writing (if you still experience time linearly, that is). If you nod off while reading it on the beach, you can pick it back up; if you can't find exactly where you left off, you can open it up and find a page at random on which to restart without losing a thing; and when you're done you can recommend it to absolutely ANYONE & trade it for a book of theirs. It's entertaining, and if you've never read it before, it's probably broadening. And many many people, of course, will get WAY more out of it than that.