Jeg elsker bøger, der minder mig om, hvor smukt og vidunderligt livet kan være. Hvor meget glæde og lys og liv man kan finde i øjeblikke, der er helt Jeg elsker bøger, der minder mig om, hvor smukt og vidunderligt livet kan være. Hvor meget glæde og lys og liv man kan finde i øjeblikke, der er helt almindelige, hvor meget af alt det, der gør livet noget værd, er i de helt små ting, det er så let at tage for givet.
Den her bog er så sprudlende fuld af varme og kærlighed, og jeg har lyst til at kramme alle jeg møder på min vej. Jeg har lyst til at kramme hele verden, og invitere dem indenfor til en kop te. ...more
Er det sjovt? Ikke rigtig. Faktisk synes jeg den er pisse ubehagelig at læse.
For det meste er den bare ude på at Skulle det nu være sjovt? Åbenbart.
Er det sjovt? Ikke rigtig. Faktisk synes jeg den er pisse ubehagelig at læse.
For det meste er den bare ude på at provokerer, hvilket ikke er særlig morsomt eller opfindsomt. Den klarer sig allerbedst, når den ikke er larmende grov og upassende, men lader sig selv være underlig og peger på det bizarre i vores forhold til hinanden, os selv og samfundet.
Det sker dog alt, alt for lidt, så den er ikke yderligere værd at læse....more
Kurt Vonnegut is the type of author who, whenever I read him, I just feel better. Deep in my soul, I feel better.
This is a collection of speeches he'Kurt Vonnegut is the type of author who, whenever I read him, I just feel better. Deep in my soul, I feel better.
This is a collection of speeches he's given, mostly to college graduates, and there are a few repetitions in the stories and anecdotes in here, but I still think it's utterly worth a read.
Vonnegut is as relevant, humane, understanding, wise and witty as always. And these speeches truly made me realize exactly who keen an observer he was of the world. He just got it. He got the white privilege, racial and economic inequality, he understood the power of education, of small communities and he understood, more than anything, how important it is to be kind and merciful.
I think you should read this. In order to convince you further, have a few quotes:
“Being merciful, it seems to me, is the only good idea we have had so far. Perhaps we will get another good idea by and by—and then we will have two good ideas.”
“So it seems quite likely to me that young people of today in the United States of America are not in fact apathetic, but only look that way to people who are used to getting their ecstasies from hatred, among other things, of course.”
“Don’t give up on books. They feel so good—their friendly heft. The sweet reluctance of their pages when you turn them with your sensitive fingertips. A large part of our brains is devoted to deciding whether what our hands are touching is good or bad for us. Any brain worth a nickel knows books are good for us.”
“I told her that what made life almost worth living for me was the saints I met. These were people who behaved compassionately and capably, no matter what, and they could be anywhere.”
The last one especially I relate to. It is the people I meet, those full of indescribably kindness, as they were somehow born to shed light unto the world by simply being present, it's those people, who give me hope, who make me believe, that all in all, humanity might be decent, might be good. ...more
This is an odd mix of fiction and autobiography. Narrated by the author himself (who is not fictional), while relying on stories and quotations from tThis is an odd mix of fiction and autobiography. Narrated by the author himself (who is not fictional), while relying on stories and quotations from the old science fiction author Kilgore Trout (who is). There are fake stories, true stories, and all of them will tell you something about being human, in all its terrible glory.
“Extenuating circumstance to be mentioned on Judgment Day: We never asked to be born in the first place.”
The universe happened upon the same question that hits us all, often for no particular reason and out of nowhere: What the hell am I supposed to do with myself? Do I continue expanding or do I quit and start over? In its understandable confusion and crisis it shrinks a bit and sends everyone back 10 years, forcing everyone to relive every moment, fully aware of having done it all before, but incapable of changing anything.
A nightmare really (“and they have to relive the 90s” I say, not knowing if the 90s really were awful, because I was a baby and then a child for all of it, Ting-a-ling! I once asked someone, though, what it was like being young in the 90s and he said "it was certainly ugly" referring to the fashion, so it probably wasn't all that great), but it makes for good storytelling.
Of course, a timequake is entirely unfeasible and would never occur, except it does every day of our lives. Humans are all too good at living in the past, reliving painful or humiliating memories, or being nostalgic for beautiful moments that are no more. That’s our timequake, and we are completely incapable of changing a thing that has happened. Reliving it too much, however, will freeze you in your present moment, because you forget that right now, you have the absolute power, you have your free will, to make every moment something you might not hate reliving.
I read this book and suddenly realized that if I had to relive the past 10 years of my life, it'd probably suck 80 percent of the time and I’d come out of it traumatized. But I can’t change a single second, so it’s best to just move on, and try to be the best I can be for the rest of my life.
Casting the ridiculous and brilliant Kilgore Trout as the hero of the story, the ideal of who we should try to be should this particular event ever occur, is a little bit genius. No one can be Trout, obviously, as he’s entirely fictional, and frankly I don’t think anyone wants to be him, but I do want to be like him.
“’The main thing about van Gogh and me,’ said Trout, ‘is that he painted pictures that astonished him with their importance, even though nobody else thought they were worth a damn and I write stories that astonish me, even though nobody else thinks they’re worth a damn. How lucky can you get?’”
The Timequake, however, plays a small role in the book. It is the frame, yes, the story we return to, but mostly this is a collection of stories from Vonnegut’s life and Kilgore Trout’s arsenal of oddball short stories. With his usual wit and round-a-bout way of saying anything, Vonnegut dishes up some striking social commentary. I’m continuously surprised by how achingly humane he is, making his observations all the more salient, because they come from a place of compassion and honesty.
I kept coming back to this one quote from a song by Say Anything, it goes:
“I guess that everyone includes me and that’s why I’m a humanist”
If anyone, Vonnegut embodies that saying, at least in this particular book.
The song is called Hate Everyone. In a way, that is also very fitting.
Sure, “being alive is a crock of shit”, but also “I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.”
I bought this book because of the title. I had no idea what it was about or what kind of book it was, I just thought the title was amazing and the covI bought this book because of the title. I had no idea what it was about or what kind of book it was, I just thought the title was amazing and the cover was thought-provoking, so I bought it.
The story behind the title was perhaps the only thing that didn’t let me down. Everything else was… awful. What a terrible book. It’s not funny, it’s not amusing, it’s not intelligent. It didn’t even make me smile. The stories aren’t connected to one another, there seem to be very little point in telling any of them - at least not a point I could find, which is a bit unfortunate because it made it like reading a long line of jokes with no punchlines… and those are bad jokes.
Let me explain it like this: you know that one person at a party? The one that always overshares, doesn’t grasp the concept of TMI and maybe gets a little too drunk, while trying over and over again to tell a funny story? But they’re bad stories. The kind where everyone stares for 5 seconds when they’re done, because there wasn’t really an ending and they haven’t realized the story is over. And you just want to get away, because it’s massively awkward and you can’t even muster up the energy to fake laugh or be polite.
This book is that person.
The one thing that really irked me was the story of a pedophile that gets released from prison and whom David speaks to when he passes his house, because he doesn’t know what else to do. There’s nothing funny about this scenario, it just made me disgusted, which I guess is a reaction, but not a very good one.
All in all, David Sedaris comes off as a whiny, needy, ridiculous man, who has zero backbone, and likes to think that retelling “funny” incidents from his day-to-day like will be of interest to the reader and offer up – well I don’t know what exactly what he thinks we’ll get out of it. Insights into life? Merely a laugh? I didn’t get anything from reading this book. I found the whole thing very off-putting.
Had the stories had more relevance to me, I might have enjoyed them more, but I rarely drink, I don’t do drugs, I don’t smoke and I’m not a gay man. So a lot of the “struggles” (quotation marks because none of those mentioned in this book are really worthy of the name) and situations he talks about are of very little interest to me and I can’t, for the life of me, see myself in any of his pointless ramblings.
Maybe there’s not supposed to be a point? Maybe this really is just a random collection of “funny” stories. Maybe all humorous memoirs are like this? Doesn’t matter to me. I have no desire to read any of his books ever again, although I almost think I should ((view spoiler)[I’m not going to (hide spoiler)]), because he’s well liked and I honestly don’t get why.
At least the title and cover will look nice on my bookshelf (if I had in mind to keep the book, but I haven’t; looking at it makes me annoyed and irrationally angry.. oooh, maybe I could cut a hole in it and hide a bottle of liquor. This certainly made me want to drink). ...more