Talk Back

[alyson]

My sister's boyfriend recommended this excitedly, so I read it. It turns out I'd read it once before.

The back of the book says Cat's Cradle is "an apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate." The reason for the title is the observation by one character that parents often teach their children how to play cat's cradle. They hold up their handfuls of carefully arranged string and say "see? Cat's cradle," but there is no cat, and no cradle, and the children can only assume that the parents know something that they don't. The plot follows a man as he pulls together the threads of circumstance to show the complicated and meaningless coincidence that led to his being a witness to that ultimate fate.

I seem to read a lot more for entertainment value than for intellectual stimulation, because although this book is full of salient points, articulate arguments, and cogent observations of religion and human nature, I didn't like it.

This was also because I'd read it before, and remembered the ending early on, and remembered that I didn't like it.

However, I didn't like 1984 either, and I read that once every five or six years, so I guess you never know.
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[galactic_dev]

1984 is a dark bummer of a story, so I can understand if someone doesn't like it.

As for Vonnegut, have you read/liked any other books by him?

[alyson]

I checked the index pages to be reminded of his other books. I've read Slaughterhouse Five, although I don't remember it much. I think I appreciated it, though I don't know whether I liked it or not.
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Eschew obfuscation.