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-Hey everyone, I am joined today by my friend Kathy. -Hello! -Today we are gonna
be talking about the book Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
Is that how do you pronounce his last name? -I believe it is, yes. -Kurt Vonnegut.
Slaughterhouse-Five. We both read this book as a part of a buddy read and we
also read The Handmaid's Tale which we reviewed over on Kathy's channel. So be
sure to check that out after this video. Slaughterhouse-Five, let's give ourselves a
limited amount of time to talk about this. What do you think? -Yeah, I think that
twenty minutes. -Okay -And then we can edit out all of our 'we don't know what we're talking
about' -Yeah that sounds, that sounds good. -Okay. I'm gonna start the timer...now. All right.
Let's go! -Slaughterhouse-Five. I would say that this is a historical
sci-fi? -Yeah? -Maybe? -I think that would be accurate. -Yeah, so this is the second Kurt Vonnegut
book that I've ever read. I read Cat's Cradle first. And going into that book I
had no idea what his style of writing was or what I was getting myself into.
But going into this I had a little bit of an idea. Have you read any of his
books before this? -I think that when I was a teenager I tried to read one of them but I didn't,
like, I wasn't seriously trying to read it. I think I was just like I picked up
Breakfast of Champions or something and I was like 'I don't know the context of
anything of this' and I am, I understand from like doing a little bit of research
that like, his books overlap a little. So if you do read them you get... -Oh interesting. -Yeah.
Which would be cool to do. -I didn't know that. -But I just haven't gotten around to it. -Is it
all kind of based in the same universe, you think? -I think so yeah. Like the
sci-fi writer in this book is the main character in Breakfast of Champions. -Oh okay.
-Or something like that. -Okay. -So, so it kind of feels like he, he's similar in, in the
vein of Stephen King. Where Stephen King's things overlap. Like everything is
interconnected and it feels like Vonnegut might be another one of those
authors although it's significantly fewer works. -Interesting, that's really cool! -Yeah
-I did not know, I don't know if there's any direct character crossover with Cat's
Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five. I don't think so, I think I would have
noticed. -Yeah -But, again, I don't know. Um, I liked this book, I don't know what you
thought. -Yeah I liked it too. I found it was really strange to slog through the
first... -Yeah -...maybe hundred pages of it, but after that I was like captured by it. -Mmmhmm. -I was
like, 'okay yeah, this book is, yeah this book is super weird and interesting and
I would like to see how this goes.' Yeah. -Yeah, yeah a lot of the the parts about
the war were very serious and and, and kind of you know, you kind of
get in this mode at the beginning of the book. You're like, 'oh this is gonna be a
serious, maybe it's gonna be a sad book' and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere,
it's like, 'okay, there's aliens!' -Yeah! -'And time travel' -Yeah! -And like 'what?' it's very...
-Yeah especially going into it not knowing anything about it. -Yeah, yeah! -And knowing it's like,
one of those classics that everyone should read. Honestly, do you know why I
was like 'hey this is a classic that everyone should read' it's because Wren
talks about it in Footloose. Like it's mentioned as a side little thing in a
musical...-Okay -I'm like I guess that's a book I need to read eventually! -Yeah, yeah I
think it's on it's on those lists people always do, those lists of 'books to
read before you die' kind of thing. -Yeah yeah, exactly. And it's just one of those
classics. -You know, yeah, you know the name, you've heard the name. It's a very like, you know, I
thought it was gonna be like a horror book. -Mmm -Without knowing anything. I was
like oh this is gonna be horror, it's gonna be like super scary,
you know, maybe sci-fi. But you know, I wasn't really sure and then I was like,
'oh no it's serious' but having, having read Cat's Cradle I was like, 'there's got
to be a weird thing, there's gotta be something that just makes it a little
off' and then sure enough, alien abduction. Okay -Yeah so you know going into it I was
gonna have some weirdness. -Yeah, I was waiting, I was waiting for it.
-I spent a decent amount of time in the book trying to figure out if Billy
Pilgrim was a stand-in for Kurt Vonnegut. Because I knew that he had been at the
the firebombing of Dresden, so I knew that. But that we found out, like, there
was this one line where like, it was just the side character that was also
there, was like, 'me, I'm the author, I am the person writing this book' and then it
just continued on. You're like, 'oh, wait. I guess Billy Pilgrim is not a stand-in.'
Maybe he's an everyman character? 'Cause it's such an everyman name 'Pilgrim' -Yeah, I was
always wondering, okay so he goes, he can travel back to like any point in his
life and sort of relive it. And he can wake up not really knowing like, at what
point in his life he is but at one point he does like, it does happen that he
meets these aliens and he gets taken and put into their zoo. Has he like, does he
always know that that's going to happen eventually? Because he can travel back,
you know, till when he was a kid...like. -Yeah, like does he know? -How many
consciousness does he have? -Yeah -I feel like it almost like, splits who he is. If that makes sense. -I felt, I felt
that the whole time travel aspect was kind of, um, because I like,
if there's too many time travel lines I can't follow them. Like anything more
complex than Back to the Future and I'm like 'mmm?' But I felt that it was kind of
like PTSD flashbacks and I felt like that's what was happening every time he
went back in time. He was actually just reliving something from a horrible
traumatic, like his life? -Okay. -Maybe? -Yeah. -That was maybe like...? -So it was was, it wasn't he was
actually traveling back and able to change anything...it was just sort of like
watching it again? -Yeah that's what I felt like, I felt like he was just like...
he was there and he could think his own thoughts but he couldn't change anything
that he had done at that particular time... is how I kind of felt about it.
-Okay yeah. let's talk about the...I guess the aliens and their ability to see all
of their lives and all of time as a flat sort of thing. It's a very un-human,
unnatural, like way of thinking. Like, you almost can't picture it.
-Yeah, like, yeah no I could not. Because we're used to just such, like,
that's how our lives go. They're very linear we can't just go back to a
different time besides like, through things like stories or memories or that
type of thing. But you can't affect anything in the past, you can't affect
anything in the future, you can only really affect what's happening now. So
any type of alien race that's just like, 'no we just exist and we can pop around
and like'...that is a very different experience than the one I have. -Yeah,
yeah it's almost like...there was this book that I read a long time ago called...
I think it was called Flatland and it was sort of this universe where
everything was in two dimensions and they couldn't perceive what three
dimensions was like. -Yeah I've heard of this, I'm like yeah, yup yup anything like inside
of our three dimensions to a four dimensions...I'm like, 'nope can't figure
that out.' It got to the point where it just seemed like his life was filled
with terrible terrible things that happened. Like he had to be in this war, he
happened to survive the bombing of Dresden, he gets married has kids and
then like, he's in a plane crash, and then his wife dies on the way to the
hospital to see him. Like your life was not really great Billy. -Yeah, and, and that
that supports your theory that a lot of these flashbacks are the results of PTSD
because a lot of the things you're seeing are really really terrible and
it's also similar to the other book of his I've read, Cat's Cradle, where there's
this sort of overlying...just just bad things happening and on their own it
could have been a very sad book but then he just has this like level of weirdness
that sort of just, it's so interesting. Did you have like, a physical copy when
you read? -Yup, definitely. -Okay, so was this in your book? -Yes, I remember that
being there. I don't remember paying much attention to it. -Okay so the quote is...
it's a tombstone and on the tombstone it reads; 'everything
was beautiful and nothing hurt.' I've heard that quote! I've heard that quote
so many times, I never knew where was from. Who would you recommend this book
to, Kathy? -Um, anyone who likes sci-fi because it's definitely that. I suppose
there's a kind of contingents of people that do like reading like, war type of
stuff, so them. Although if they're like hardcore into just like military tactics
maybe not. But also, it would be an interesting perspective to see them read
this book and see what they get out of what I'm assuming is mostly PTSD imagery,
because I don't know. -Yeah, yeah and if you have those two interests than this might be a
perfect book for you to read. I, I enjoyed it, I liked it, it was a good
time. It's also a fairly quick read, um, I mean, depending on your...how long it takes
you read. But I'm a very slow reader and it, I did breeze through it fairly,
fairly easily. His books tend to be, I think, on the shorter side.
Compact, interesting stories, made me think about life and death and I'm
really glad I'm not in an alien zoo. -Yep! Not the place I want to be. That or
you know, in a war for that matter. -Yeah! Yep. -Yeah -Yup. Yeah, a lot of like,
parallels with like, real actual reality, terrible things and then like
-Made-up terrible things. -Compleatly made-up terrible things.
-Yup -With a with a odd lightness to the way the narrative is presented. -Yeah. -It's...
-So it goes. -It's heavy but it's just...so it goes.
Exactly. -Yup. -So it goes. -Ooo, we have 30 seconds. What are your, what are your last
thoughts about the book? -It's it's an interesting ride.
-Yeah I would concur with that, uh having picked it up not knowing what I was
getting myself into, it's definitely an interesting time. Also there's a Crash
Course literature video about it which I'm pretty sure I watched years before
reading the book. -Oh wow. -So, so that's an interesting time. -I should, I'm gonna go watch that. -Yup yeah, definitely. -Yeah.
*timer goes off* -And that's time. We did it, yea us! -We did it! Thanks so much for watching, please go
check out Kathy's channel and subscribe and watch our video on The Handmaid's
Tale. Comment below if you have any other questions for us about this book or if
you've read it and your thoughts or if you hated it or loved it.
Tell us why. Anything else you want to say? -Not particularly. Can we meow? -Yes!
-Yea!! -We can meow!
-Meow -Meow