Slaughterhouse-Five 
 By Kurt Vonnegut 
 1.5 stars rounded up to 2 stars, or "it was OK," for the sake of pity. I reserve 1 star, or "didn't like it," for the worst kind of tripe, and this wasn't quite that bad. 
 On occasion I'm able to sum up a book in a single word, and the word for this one is "obnoxious." 
 An old friend mentioned in a facebook post that he had a couple of extra copies of this book, and was willing to send them to anyone who wanted them free of charge. I mentioned it was on my to-read list, and so he sent it to me. I asked him why he was so willing to get rid of it, and he said "I have too many copies, and more people need to read it." (I just now reread the message he sent). I assumed this was an endorsement, and over time in my head I changed it around to mean "THIS IS THE BEST BOOK EVER!!!" (My brain does that). I told him I'd read it as soon as I got it, and 11 months and 5 days after it appeared in my mailbox, I straightaway read it. In my desire to aspire to his conviction that it was "THE BEST BOOK EVER!" I really wanted to like this. Such was not the case, though. 
 I'll move right into the gripe section of this review since I really don't have anything to put in the praise section. The chapters are numbered one through ten. "One" is actually what I would call an introduction, and halfway through it I was asking myself "What the fuck?" Luckily, it turned into a real novel at the start of chapter "two." It's about Billy Pilgrim, the son of a milksop and an eclair, as near as I can tell. The poor man has the personality of a dial tone, but I think that's the point. His story is told in a chopped up and rearranged matter. Pretend that your life is divided up into 26 pieces, and each piece is assigned a letter. A would be birth, Z would be death, D might be elementary school, G one's first job, K one's marriage, and so on... Oh Christ... I just said "and so on," which is one of the two overly repeated phrases in this book. The other I'll get to in a moment... I hope I'm OK. I did fall asleep reading this late at night a couple of times. Maybe the spores came out of the book at that time and infected me? 
 Anyway, be that as it may, pretend your life is an alphabet, then take all the letters, jumble them around in a tumbler, pull them out one at a time, and arrange them linearly as you place them on the table. That's how Billy Pilgrim's life is laid out for us. It's a little annoying, but nothing I can't deal with. Double negatives on the other hand... Let me rephrase and state that it's something I can deal with. Prepositions at the end of sentences on the other hand... Fuck it. I'm not changing that, so don't ask me to. To. TO! HAH! Take that. And again I digress. This actually works in the story's favor since Billy Pilgrim's life is rather boring. Well, at least Billy Pilgrim himself is. Even the bit where he's kidnapped by aliens is lackluster, though it has some amusing factors to it. So, if you're in it for the story itself, I think you'll be disappointed. 
 Writing style. That portion is brought to you by the letter "Z" which is used to spell "Zzzzzzzz." Laconic restraint is, like Hemingway, Vonnegut's style. I generally don't like the style, but greatly appreciate the fact that he used it since it made the book much shorter than it would've been had he written it in my own style of "effusive excess" which is occasionally reminiscent of Victor God-Damned Hugo who could've made "Patty Cake" into a 75 page epistle. Mr. V. also uses the phrase "So it goes" whenever he mentions, or even alludes to, death. In this book which contains a total of 215 pages, the sentence is used 106 times. That is so close to every-other-page, that it doesn't matter. Close enough for government work, at least. I almost wanted to scream a couple of times, and throw the book. So, if you're in it for great prose, I think you'll be disappointed. 
 After reading the book, I checked out other reviews about it because I knew this was supposed to be a great shocker, and is frequently on banned book lists. I can understand the banning due to language and some sexual references, but to read some of the reviews, one would think this novel is downright pornographic with filth and excrement spewed throughout. I did not get that impression at all. Some f-bombs are dropped; Billy has sex a couple of times; there are a couple of scenes at a latrine. It's not that bad; I've read much more graphic stuff. Of course, that's hardly conclusive since I'm a huge Stephen King fan. I really didn't find anything in here to be alarming. So, if you're in it for shock value, I think you'll be disappointed. 
 A lot of the plugs on the back of the book mentioned how funny it was, as did some reviewers. They also mentioned it being a great satire. I'm afraid the joke was on me, for I may have snickered twice during a couple of the scenes with the aliens. As for the satire, I didn't see it. I'm assuming it was poking at the Dresden bombing since this is advertised as an anti-war book with the Dresden bombing being the focal point of the anti-war argument. I didn't see that at all. It stayed factual with respects to that event as near as I can tell, and I didn't think it was pooh-poohing it, though it's clear that Vonnegut is quite liberal, and anti-war; I didn't feel all of that bleeding into the novel itself. However, I must point out that I read stories for the stories themselves, or the writing style of the prose. Deeper hidden meanings, literary techniques, poetic stuff, and all sorts of other things that minds more philosophical than mine appreciate are often lost on me. So, if you're in it for the stuff mentioned in the last sentence, you'll probably love it. It gets very high ratings over all, but I just can't find a way to honestly give it one. 
 So, there you have it folks. I've read another one of my "I-read-this-for-the-t-shirt" books, and the t-shirt is the best I can take from it. And it's not even a real t-shirt; it's just a metaphor, or something like that. (Like I said, I'm not hip to the advanced literary terms). Take it or leave it. The writing style is so light that it's not a complete time waster if you don't like it. I'm not upset that I read it. In fact, I'm glad I was able to try something I normally don't like and escape relatively unscathed. Also instead of having contempt prior to investigation, I can state that my contempt is well founded, and back-up my arguments.