JAILBIRD by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in 1979.

Synopsis

Jailbird is the fictional story of William F. Starbuck, the least important member of the Watergate conspiracy to go to prison. 

The story begins with the day that Starbuck is released from a makeshift federal prison (and very cushy, for a prison) on a Georgia military base. He has no idea what he is going to do and he doesn't have a lot of money, but he figures that he will be okay - after all, he has a degree from Harvard and he learned how to be a bartender in a correspondence class while he was in prison.

What follows is a wild tale of good and bad coincidences that take Starbuck to a broken-down residential motel in New York City. Like the hotel, Starbuck is a broken man in many ways - he is an ex-con, his wife of many years has passed away, he never speaks to his son, and he feels shame for accidentally ruining the career of one of his friends due to an offhand comment he made during a anti-Communist Congressional hearing lead by then-Congressman Richard Nixon.

But, in just a few hours everything changes...

My Review

In many ways Jailbird is considered to be a comeback novel for Vonnegut (1922-2007). After the overwhelming success of Slaughter-House 5, Vonnegut struggled to "do it again."

He struggled to write Breakfast of Champions. His next book, Slapstick, was too personal and too weird to be a bestseller. Jailbird reminds me more of Mother Night and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater than the three science fiction books that he published from 1969 to 1976.

World War II looms large in each of those books - the main characters are struggling to deal with what they saw and did (also a massive theme in Slaughter-House 5)

William F. Starbuck worked as a part of the prosecution team during the Nuremberg Trials. If it hadn't been for the war, he wouldn't have met his wife. The war made him, and everything about it was accidental - he met his wife on by sheer luck. He was assigned to the the trials because he happened to be around and ht happened to be around because of the education he was given by an old millionaire who was a recluse because someone unknown strikebreaker mistakenly pulled the trigger during a tense moment in a strike when the millionaire was a child.

One unrelated thing leads to another and leads to another like a thread of random events that led us to where we are now. Vonnegut spent a lot of time thinking about this idea. In his science fiction books he often explores it through time travel. This book relies heavily on flashbacks.

Vonnegut's report card for his own books.

Jailbird often looks at the plight of the regular working stiff - restaurant managers, chauffeurs, receptionists, the least important guy in the Nixon Administration, down and out authors, affable guards in a minimum security prison, and so on. There is a lengthy introduction about a real-life event in Vonnegut's life that blends into a fictional story about a strike at an Ohio factory that ended in a bloody massacre.

Vonnegut famously graded his own books in the essay collection Palm Sunday. He gave Jailbird an A. I disagree a bit. I rate it 4 stars out of 5, which I would consider to be a B.

Jailbird can be found on Amazon.com here: Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut.

SLAPSTICK or LONESOME NO MORE! by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in 1976.

Synopsis

In the essay that serves as the prologue to Slapstick, Kurt Vonnegut writes about family, connection, and acceptance. He spends a lot of time talking about his older brother - more than he usually does in his essays. He also talks about his sister - a topic of frequent discussion in his essays. She and her husband both died with days of one another, one of an accident and the other of cancer. Kurt Vonnegut and his wife adopted three of their four children. 

In his essays Vonnegut makes frequent mention of the lack of family connection in our modern world and he thinks we are far the worse off for it. This novel is all about family connection, featuring two physically deformed twins who who are psychically connected.

The twins were kept apart from society in an old mansion on a large estate in order to protect them from society and to protect the reputations of their elite, ultra-rich parents. After all, the "right sort of people" don't have freaks for children.

It was assumed that the children would have mental disabilities. It turns out that they were geniuses, especially when they were physically close to one another...

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

My Review

This is a truly bizarre novel, even by the standards of Kurt Vonnegut. I liked the book in many ways, but I really can't say that it was a great or even a particularly good novel. There are times when it just gets so weird that the story gets buried in its own absurdities.

In one of his essays, Vonnegut graded all of his books up to that point. He gave Slapstick a grade of 'D.' I will do better than that - I give it 3 stars out of 5 (a solid 'C') because it has a lot of heart. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut. 

KURT VONNEGUT: THE LAST INTERVIEW and OTHER CONVERSATIONS (Last Interview Series) edited by Tom McCartan

 

Published in 2011 by Melville House.

The Last Interview Series is a collection of 42 books that collect interviews with various artists, celebrities, and political figures. The book includes the last interview given by the featured person.

In the case of Vonnegut, his last interview is very short because he was ill at the time so he cut it short.

There are six interviews here. The best is a co-interview with fellow author Joseph Heller (best known for Catch-22) from Playboy (turns out their interviews were a good reason to buy the magazine!) Heller helps Vonnegut focus a bit - he tends to go off on riffs and some interviewers don't know what to do with that (the first one seemed annoyed by this tendency.)

If you like Vonnegut's essays, you will enjoy these interviews. I love his collections of essays so I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview and Other Conversations.

WELCOME to PAWNEE: STORIES of FRIENDSHIP, WAFFLES, and PARKS and RECREATION (audiobook) by Jim O'Heir

Published by HarperAudio in November of 2024.

Read by Jim O'Heir, George Newbern, Eva Kaminsky, Janina Edwards, Roger Wayne, Jim Meskimen, and Adam Verner.

Duration: 6 hours, 24 minutes.

Unabridged.

Jim O'Heir has been knocking around Hollywood for years as a journeyman actor. He has had roles in dozens and dozens of TV shows and movies - good stuff and bad stuff - but always regular stuff. He was well on his way to becoming one of those character actors that you see so often that you say, "Oh! There's that guy! He was on that one show."

Then in 2009, he showed up on the new NBC show Parks and Recreation playing the bumbling and often befuddled lovable loser Jerry Gergrich. He kept playing this character for all 123 episodes of the show.

This book is a dual biography of sorts. It is the story of Jim O'Heir and how he came to the show, but it's also the story of the show itself. Jim interviews producers, writers, directors, and other actors to give us the story of Parks and Recreation itself. We learn about how it was conceived, how they cast the main characters, what life was like on the set, and more.

Indianapolis is my adopted hometown so I particularly was interested in the field trip episodes that were filmed in Indianapolis. I do have to point out that O'Heir incorrectly claims that the famed St. Elmo Steak House in downtown Indianapolis is not named after the 1985 Rob Lowe movie St. Elmo's Fire. The restaurant first opened in 1902.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It is a must read for fans of Park and Recreation. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation.

ATTUCKS! OSCAR ROBERTSON and the BASKETBALL TEAM THAT AWAKENED A CITY by Phillip Hoose

Published in 2018 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

NOTE: Also published under the title UNBEATABLE!

Attucks! appears to be just a story about a 1950's era basketball team, but it is much more than that.

it is the story of Jim Crow style racism in a northern state. It is the story of an underdog school getting its chance to compete at the highest level. It is the story of one amazing player, a great coach, and Indiana's famous single class basketball system.

First - the single class basketball system. Back in the 1900's, Indiana had a single class basketball system. This means that every team was in the same playoff system together - no matter how big or how small. This was highlighted in the based-on-a-true-story movie Hoosiers. The true story had Milan High School (161 students) beating Muncie Central (1600+ students) in 1954. Usually, it wasn't that dramatic of a disparity, but small town schools did very well from 1911-1954. The biggest city in the state, Indianapolis, won zero championships during that time.

This is where the story of Crispus Attucks High School comes in. Attucks was an all African-American segregated high school smack dab in the middle of the city of Indianapolis. Indianapolis was a late arrival to the Jim Crow practice of segregated education (Attucks opened in 1927.) The school was named for the Crispus Attucks, an African-American and the first person to die in the Boston Massacre and possibly the American Revolution.

Attucks vs. Tech - a massive rivalry. Attucks is wearing the darker jerseys.

Attucks was prohibited from playing in the high school tournament until 1942 because...well, there really was no legal reason so we can just chalk that up to racism.

The book focuses on the development of the Attucks basketball program until it became a powerhouse in the 1950's. It's not just that though. This was the first really good team to come out of Indianapolis. It was all African-American in a highly segregated city. It had style, class, and pride in its underdog status. It had perhaps the best player to come out of Indianapolis ever - Oscar Robertson (no kidding - he was astoundingly good.) They won 45 games in a row and won back-to-back state championships in 1955 and 1956. 

How good was this team? The author tells the story of a game that Attucks won 123-59. A player on the losing team was crying after the embarrassing loss. His father told him, "You might as well stop that crying. Because can't nobody beat them. You ought to be glad you ever played against them." (p. 152)

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It is very readable and told the human side of the story very well. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ATTUCKS! OSCAR ROBERTSON and the BASKETBALL TEAM THAT AWAKENED A CITY by Phillip Hoose.

GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Originally published in 1965.

After a steady stream of science fiction books, Kurt Vonnegut delivers a straight out social commentary with God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. 

Synopsis:

Eliot Rosewater is the heir to a family fortune built on selling munitions in the Civil War and every war after that. The family fortune was built in Indiana but the family has moved to Providence, Rhode Island where it has a family mansion along with all of the others along the waterfront. His father is one of the senators from Rhode Island.

The Rosewater family avoids paying income taxes on this vast fortune by funding the Rosewater Foundation. Generally speaking, the foundation has been a legal way to not pay taxes and instead pay Eliot a whole lot of money to do nothing but supervise a foundation that does next to nothing.

A mural of Vonnegut in his
hometown - Indianapolis.
Photo by DWD

Eliot is suffering from PTSD (called "combat fatigue" in this book) from his experiences in World War II and drowns in troubles in bottle after bottle of alcohol. His only interests are science fiction and volunteer fire departments. He often gets black out drunk and comes back to his senses in a new town. He checks out the nearest volunteer fire department and sees if they have any new techniques or if they need any new equipment. Either way, he gives them something with foundation money.

Eliot is convinced to settle down in Rosewater County in southern Indiana. This is where his ancestors came from. He moves the foundation headquarters to Rosewater, Indiana and becomes the de facto caretaker of the people in this small town. People come to him with their problems and he listens. Sometimes, they need a little money to get over a rough patch or to help with a medical expense. It's all tedious, but the town needs him - even if it is to be someone to yell and scream at. 

The problem is, a lawyer at the law firm that handles the foundation business has found a different Rosewater from another branch of the family. The lawyer thinks he can remove Eliot as the head due to insanity. He will replace him with this other Rosewater and then make a fortune by representing him...

My review:

Vonnegut's report card

I am reading the Vonnegut novels in order of publication. This one is my favorite so far. Eliot is both a great man and a terrific loser. In a way, he is an imitation of Jesus and in a way he's a pathetic drunk that reads too much science fiction. This book is also the introduction to Vonnegut's literary alter-ego, Kilgore Trout.

Vonnegut famously graded his own books in the essay collection Palm Sunday. He gave God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater an A and I agree. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

PALM SUNDAY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COLLAGE by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Published in 1981 by Delacorte Press.

Kurt Vonnegut offers this collection (he calls is a "collage") of fiction, non-fiction, interviews, and even a musical based on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

As is the case with all collections, some parts of the collection are excellent and some parts are not very good. I believe that he first half of the collection is the best, mostly because of the inclusion of a history of the Vonnegut family in Indianapolis. Ironically, it was not written by Vonnegut, but by a family member who had married into the Vonnegut family. 

Indianapolis is my adopted hometown and this Vonnegut family history reads like a history of the city from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. I found it fascinating reading, especially the story of the subscription brothel gentlemen's club that was frequented by the city's elite in an area that still has political "clubs" with fancy dining and smoking rooms more than 100 years later. It would be tacky to pay a prostitute, but paying club dues that were used to maintain the club and also to pay the prostitutes - well that's not tacky at all!

The musical based on Jekyll and Hyde written in 1978 was completely horrible.

Vonnegut is well-known for having written a report card of his published books - this is the book that features that report card. Oftentimes, I disagree with his self-assessment - but not this time. He gives this book a "C" (yes, he graded the book as he was writing/collecting all of the parts of it) and I agree.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: PALM SUNDAY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COLLAGE by Kurt Vonnegut.

YOU SHOULD SEE ME in a CROWN (audiobook) by Leah Johnson

Published in 2020 by Scholastic Audio.

Read by Alaska Jackson.
Duration: 7 hours, 18 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

High School senior Liz Lighty is depending on a $10,000 music scholarship to be able to afford to attend the college she has always wanted to go to.  When she discovers that she doesn't get the scholarship, she's afraid her grandparents will sell their house to pay for her college.

Her high school offers a $10,000 scholarship for the winner of the Prom Queen competition. Enthusiastic band member Liz, supported by her outsider group of friends, joins the competition against all cheerleaders, legacies, and the beautiful people...

My Review:

In a lot of ways, You Should See Me In a Crown is a typical high school ugly duckling story - the underdog great kid goes up against the popular clique.

But, there are some additional nuances that make this more interesting. 

The book is set in the Indianapolis area (Indianapolis is my adopted hometown) and the high school in the book (Campbell) is a play on the real Indianapolis suburb named Carmel. Carmel and its neighbors have had multiple incidents with race, inclusion, book bans, and the like. Remember the Moms for Liberty parent group that published a newsletter with the Adolph Hitler quote? This is that place.

This matters in this book because Liz Lighty is African American and lesbian, like the author. Those two facts, especially the second one, are a big deal.

The Indianapolis Arts Garden, the site of 
the prom in this book.

Readers from the Indianapolis area will appreciate the mentions of local landmarks like Mass Ave, Rick's Café and Boatyard, and the Arts Garden.

The book is interesting because of the issues of race and sexuality, but it is a very good book because Leah Johnson is a very good author. Her characters look like they are the standard high school kids from a teen movie or TV show, but she breathes life in them and makes them stand out. Her descriptions of those first few exciting, confusing and embarrassing days of falling in love ring true and were fun to listen to in this audiobook.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: YOU SHOULD SEE ME in a CROWN (audiobook) by Leah Johnson.

Note: In 2022, the Oklahoma Attorney General announced he was going to review a list of more than 50 books that "several concerned individuals" had submitted top his office rather than going through their local school boards. His office decided to determine if the books were "obscene." Later, he dropped his investigation, but not the recommendation that local school boards take these complaints seriously. Although most of the books on this list have an LGBTQ+ theme, it is a wide-ranging list, including classics like Of Mice and Men, Brave New World, and Lord of the Flies. There is nothing "obscene" in this book. There are no sexual acts beyond a few kisses.

This book was also put on a book ban list in Tennessee. The article has a searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles.
 

UNDERGROUND AIRLINES (audiobook) by Ben H. Winters

 

Published in 2016 by Hachette Audio.

Read by William DeMerritt.

Duration: 9 hours, 28 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Underground Airlines is set in the year 2015 in an alternate historical timeline. This is a world where the American Civil War almost happened but did not. In the real historical timeline, an amendment to the Constitution called the Crittenden Compromise was proposed in December of 1860 as the first Confederate states were seceding. It preserved slavery, limited its spread and clarified the role of the federal government in returning runaway slaves. The Crittenden Compromise was not taken seriously by most people and it failed.

In this alternate history, the Crittenden Compromise was taken  seriously because President-elect Lincoln was assassinated in Indianapolis as he was traveling to his inauguration in Washington, D.C. The shock of the assassination brought all of the states back together to negotiate and a version of the Crittenden Compromise passed. There was no Civil War and American slavery continues in 4 states on into the 21st century (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and a combined North/South Carolina.

The protagonist of the book is an escaped slave turned into a hunter of escaped slaves. He is working undercover using the name Jim in Indianapolis, Indiana tracking down an escaped slave. He's bothered a bit because the paperwork for this slave is very incomplete and this is rare. Usually, slaves are meticulously tracked, literally tattooed, bar coded and even chipped. 

Jim is nervous because the incomplete file. But, as you can imagine, he's not happy being an escaped slave who hunts down escaped slaves - but he has no choice. He is chipped with a device in his neck that tracks him and, with the flip of a switch, can kill him. It puts him an emotionally painful paradox - in order to maintain his freedom he must catch others.

Jim meets all kinds of people as he searches through Indianapolis - members of the Underground Airlines (the modern successor to the Underground Railroad movement of the 1800s), militant anti-slavers, militant pro-slavers, a white woman searching for the love of her life (an escaped slave), members of the black market that exists in freedman neighborhoods, and more. 

Still, once he finds out what is going on, it involves more than he could ever imagine and makes him go where he never thought he would go...

My review:

I am a fan of:

1) alternate histories,

2) study of the Civil War,

3) my adopted hometown - Indianapolis.

This means I was pretty much perfectly set up to enjoy this book and I did. This was a well-told story. I enjoyed learning about how this alternate world was different and the same. For example, Michael Jackson is a big deal in this alternate world, too.

But, the United States is technologically behind the rest of the world by a few years due to anti-slavery boycotts by the rest of the world and lack of technical innovation coming from America itself. It's about 20 years behind and not really an economic leader in anything except the production of cotton and cotton clothing.  America's big ally is South Africa, with its policy of apartheid.

It's clear that Ben H. Winters knows his way around Indianapolis. Indy is my adopted hometown - I've lived here for 30 years. Every bit of Indianapolis he describes makes sense historically. 

I enjoyed this book. I rate it 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: UNDERGROUND AIRLINES by Ben H. Winters.

CAT'S CRADLE by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Originally published in 1963.

Synopsis:

Cat's Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut's fourth novel. The narrator is a writer who wants to tell the story of the first atomic bombing by telling what various people did that day. One of the people he is interested in is one of the creators of the bomb, a researcher named Felix Hoennikker. 

Hoennikker has already passed away so the author reaches out to his three children and finds two of them. They describe a man with no real emotions. He is not a cruel man, he is utterly detached from everything except research. 

During his interviews with a colleagues at the laboratory he worked at in Ilium, New York (also the setting for his first novel Player Piano, but these books are clearly not in the same time line) the narrator discovers that Hoennikker may have invented a more dangerous weapon than the atomic bomb - a substance called "ice-nine."

Ice-nine was created as a simple thought experiment that came from an offhand comment from a general who had complained about how the U.S. Army kept getting bogged down in the mud. Ice-nine solidifies all of the water it contacts - freezes it at room temperature. And, it keeps spreading. Ice-nine creates more ice-nine as it freezes. Theoretically, if someone dropped it into a body of water it would just keep on going until it runs out of water to freeze. If you dropped it into a river it would just keep going until it got to an ocean and then keep going around the world.

That's when the narrator figures out that each of the three children possesses a chunk of ice-nine and one of them who was missing has just become the head of the military of a very backward third world country in the Caribbean...

My Review: 

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

This book, unlike the previously mentioned Player Piano, has the complete feel of a Vonnegut novel. There is a lot of dark humor that is barely trying to hide Vonnegut's commentary about the insanity of the Cold War and the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction. It fits in nicely with the 1964 movie Doctor Strangelove.

I found the first part of the book to be fairly slow and tedious (the part described in my synopsis), but the second half zips along pretty well and gets better and better as it gets more ridiculous, including the creation of an original religion.

Vonnegut has a habit of mentioning his native Indiana and/or Indianapolis in his books and this book features plenty of those mentions. 

At one point, Vonnegut gave all of his books a letter grade. He gave Cat's Cradle an A+. I think it was good, but not that good. I will give it a B.

I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: CAT'S CRADLE by Kurt Vonnegut.

IF THIS ISN'T NICE, WHAT IS? (EVEN MORE) EXPANDED THIRD EDITION: THE GRADUATION SPEECHES and OTHER WORDS to LIVE BY by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Published in 2020 by Seven Stories Press.
Edited by Dan Wakefield.
Introduction by Dan Wakefield.

Many of the well-known quotes from Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) were not actually in his novels - they came from speeches he gave (mostly) in the latter half of his career. Vonnegut became quite a popular deliverer of graduation speeches. And why not? He was witty, irreverent and sometimes came up with a great quote like this one: "Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody want to maintain it." (p. 230)

The title of this book comes from a story that Vonnegut has included in other essays. Vonnegut had two uncles who responded very differently to his World War II experiences. His Uncle Dan congratulated Vonnegut for having gone to war as a boy and come back as a man. 

His Uncle Alex was a different sort of man. The kind of man who encouraged everyone to notice the good things of life as they happen around us. "...when life was most agreeable - and it could be just a pitcher of lemonade in the shade - he would say, 'If this isn't nice, what is?'" He goes on to note, "If he hadn't said that so regularly, maybe five or six times a month we might not have paused to notice how rewarding life can be sometimes." (p. 135)

An illustration from the book
and the inspiration for the cover.

The book has several of Vonnegut's unique illustrations with their own distinctive Vonnegut style. The book is printed with multiple colors and is literally one of the most attractive looking paperback books I have held in my hands. 

The quality of speeches is all over the place. If you read a lot of Vonnegut, you are used to him rambling along in a seemingly pointless way with any number of weird observations and then he suddenly he drops a profound thought. Some of these are very much that way. Some are strong throughout and some are kind of weak. Having said that, this collection could serve as a fine introduction to a reader who is starting to read Vonnegut's essays. 

I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: IF THIS ISN'T NICE, WHAT IS? (EVEN MORE) EXPANDED THIRD EDITION: THE GRADUATION SPEECHES and OTHER WORDS to LIVE BY by Kurt Vonnegut.
 

INDIANA from the AIR by Richard Fields and Hank Huffman

 

Published in 1996 by Indiana University Press and Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

From 1993 to 1995 the two authors combined to take pictures of Indiana from an Indiana Department of Natural Resources helicopter - one was the pilot and one was the photographer.

They chose 100 pictures of the state for this coffee table book. There are 92 counties in Indiana, but there is not a picture of each county. However, these pictures are a good representative sample of the state ranging from the Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan to the fossil bed at the Falls of the Ohio. The pictures include urban areas, suburbs, small towns, farms and pictures of Indiana's understated beauty. There are no commanding views like the Grand Canyon or the Rockies, but it is beautiful in its own way.

Since the book is more than 25 years old, it was interesting to note some of the changes. The Indianapolis skyline has changed with the addition of at least two very large buildings on either side of downtown. The photograph featuring the campus of IUPUI (Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis) is, I am pleased to say, very out of date. That university has really expanded and come into its own in the last 25 years. The West Baden Springs Hotel is pictured as it used to be - an abandoned but still glorious piece of architecture. Now, it is completely restored and very high class working hotel. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. I liked the book, but I would have made an effort to have a wider variety and included architectural gems like Columbus and Indiana University - Bloomington. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  INDIANA from the AIR by Richard Fields and Hank Huffman.

SIRENS of TITAN by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Originally published in 1959.
Finalist for the 1960 Hugo Award.

The Sirens of Titan is the second published novel by Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007). I decided to do a systematic reading of Vonnegut's books and I started with this one. Why did I start with his second bookbecause it mentioned the fictional planet of Tralfamadore and I know that Tralfamadore figures into several other Vonnegut books later on.

I must admit that I am a huge fan of Vonnegut's essay collections, but I have found some of his books to be...a bit too chaotic. That's funny, because I love that about his essays.

This book features a couple of very rich men. One had become a space explorer because of a phenomenon called the chrono-synclastic infundibulum that exists in a spiral in the solar system. Earth governments have stopped sending people on exploration missions because they could just disappear. Winston Niles Rumfoord built a private, luxury space ship and he and his dog headed directly for the chrono-synclastic infundibulum and disappeared.

Rumfoord now reappears on Earth every 59 days for one hour. On one of those days, he requested to meet the world's richest man - Malachi Constant because he has a message for him. What follows is a series of predictions that all come true.

************

This book is full of all sorts of themes, including the ideas that organized religion is bunk, no one is really totally in control of their lives and God does not intervene in our lives which are simply the product of random chance. 

A mural of Kurt Vonnegut in his hometown -
Indianapolis, Indiana. Photo by DWD.

The beginning of this book and the ending were interesting to me. The whole middle part about the Martian invasion and a detour to Mercury was tedious for me. 

In one of his essays, Vonnegut gave an A-F grade to a bunch of his novels. He gave Sirens of Titan an A. I am going to disagree and give it 3 stars out of 5 - my equivalent of a C.  

Quotes I liked:

"...a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."

"Indianapolis, Indiana...is the first place in the United States of America where a white man was hanged for the murder of an Indian. The kind of people who'll hang a white man for murdering an Indian...that's the kind of people for me." (Note: this is pretty much true - it happened near a suburb of Indianapolis - Anderson)

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE SIRENS of TITAN by Kurt Vonnegut.

THE ANTHROPOCENE REVIEWED: ESSAYS on a HUMAN-CENTERED PLANET (audiobook) by John Green

 

Published in 2021 by Penguin Audio.
Read by the author, John Green.
Duration: 10 hours, 3 minutes.
Unabridged.

This collection of essays is, from what I understand, mostly a re-working of essays that Green has published on his blog or his YouTube channel. However, they were all new to me because I haven't seen more than a few snippets of his videos that my oldest daughter has shown me. 

I know a bit about John Green because I live in Indianapolis, which is my adopted hometown just like it is John Green's adopted hometown. Green doesn't go out of his way to make his presence felt in his adopted hometown, but he is our current well-known author, replacing Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) with a completely different kind of vibe. Vonnegut gives off a whip-smart angry feeling with sarcasm to spare. Very clever. Green gives off a smart, understanding melancholy feeling. Just as smart as Vonnegut, but different. Vonnegut grew up here and moved away. He was always proud to be FROM Indianapolis but never lived here as an adult. Green grew up other places and is glad to live IN Indianapolis. 

The premise of this book is that it is a series of Amazon-type reviews of items from the Anthropocene Era (a term for the era of Earth since humans arrived on the scene, like the Jurassic or the Cretaceous). Green dislikes the 5 star review system and he assigns the different topics he writes about a different star value.

This collection of essays can be very personal. Green is very open about his personal struggles with depression, a discussion that makes you feel like you are being brought in close, like a friend, as you listen to the audiobook. His style comes off as very conversational, like a friend is telling you a story. All that's missing is the reader occasionally saying things like "Uh-huh" and "Really?" from time to time.

The World's Largest Ball of Paint in Alexandria, IN.
My family painted this yellow layer. Wondering why I
included this picture? It all makes sense if you read
this book. 

Green writes about a wide variety of topics, including the Academic Decathalon, Diet Dr. Pepper, Canada Geese, the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, Sunsets, CNN, The Smallpox Vaccine, Sycamore Trees, The World's Largest Ball of Paint, Super Mario Kart, Indianapolis, the Indy 500, and Piggly Wiggly. Some are basically information about a topic, some like the Super Mario Kart essay have a nice twist of political commentary at the end that make you think.

This is generally not a funny book, but there are parts that are literally laugh out loud funny. I laughed so hard that I cried during his essay enititled "Mortification". On the other hand, "Sycamore Trees" came very close to making me cry from his poignant commentary on living life with depression. We have a daughter that deals with depression and it struck home to me in a very personal way. When I finished hearing it as I was driving, I immediately called my wife and told her that she had to read it right away.

Highly Recommended. 5 stars out of 5.  I may be coming back to this one in a couple of years for a re-read. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here:THE ANTHROPOCENE REVIEWED: ESSAYS on a HUMAN-CENTERED PLANET (audiobook) by John Green.

RACER by John Andretti and Jade Gurss

 

Published by Octane Press in September of 2020.

I thoroughly enjoyed this autobiography because John Andretti was my favorite race car driver - period. 

I have watched auto racing for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are going to qualifications for the Indy 500. I have Janet Guthrie's autograph - not realizing when I got it that it was actually an amazing autograph to have. The sound of a single car circling the track with the roar and whine of the engine (it has both sounds at the same time) echoing off of the stands makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The history at that track cannot be topped by any other venue in the world.

I attended my first NASCAR race at Michigan in 1981 with my father. The spectacle of the whole thing was amazing. It was won by my favorite driver at the time, Richard Petty. In 1986, we went to our first Indy 500 and haven't missed one since (the 2020 race doesn't count since no spectators were allowed due to Covid-19). 

John Andretti first came to my attention as the cousin and nephew of his more famous relatives, Michael and Mario Andretti. He was like an also-ran compared to them because he didn't come with fully-funded top-notch rides and I paid him little attention - he had the famous name but I wasn't particularly fond of his cousin Michael Andretti. Michael had a reputation for complaining about everything and everyone. He has gotten much better as an owner and I have to say I am truly a fan of the way he manages his IndyCar teams.

So, when a local Indianapolis radio station started to interview him every week I listened with some serious skepticism. Before long, I found that I had a lot in common with John. We were born in the same hospital (5 years apart) and I live on the West Side of Indy, where he grew up. It became clear that he was much more of a regular guy race car driver than his more famous cousin. Plus, he had a great sense of humor. 

Soon enough, his segment became "must listen" radio for me and I became a fan. He started a go-kart race as a joke competition with one of the on-air personalities and raised money for Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis. It became know as the Race for Riley. I attended a few of them as the event grew from just a few thousand dollars to raising hundreds of thousands at a time (almost $5 million at the time this book was published). In fact, a portion of the purchase price of the hardcover edition of this book goes to Race for Riley.

John Andretti really lies at the intersection of my racing interests. I love the Indy 500 - and so did he. My favorite driver in NASCAR was Richard Petty and I was the absolute happiest as a fan when John drove Petty's 43 car. And John was the first driver to race the Indy 500, climb on a plane and then fly to Charlotte, North Carolina to race in NASCAR's longest race - the World 600 (as it was called then).

John's reaction when he discovered he had colon cancer was not surprising. His was so advanced when he found out that he really had almost no chance. He went out of his way to let people know that that was easily preventable and they could learn from his example and get a colonoscopy early on to have a better result. I did - one month before his death. And, it was a good thing, too! Thanks, John. 

Having heard John in several year's worth of weekly interviews, I can tell you that this book does have the true feel of his voice, which says a lot for his ghost author Jade Gurss. Gurss seems to specialize in racing-related books, which had to be a big help for writing this one.

The last page of this book hit me like a ton of bricks, even though I knew exactly how it ended. 

Left to Right: Richard Petty, John Andretti and
Michael Andretti. John ran a car with Richard
Petty's traditional colors for his cousin's
team in the 2010 Indy 500.

There are four forwards to the book and they are a testament to John Andretti's level of connection in the racing community: Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Michael Andretti and Richard Petty. This is a collection of American racing royalty that is unrivaled. 

So, there is my mess of a review of a book that I absolutely enjoyed. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: RACER by John Andretti and Jade Gurss.

THE FAMOUS FACES of INDY'S WTTV-4: SAMMY TERRY, COWBOY BOB, JANIE and MORE by Julie Young

Published in 2013 by the History Press.

If you were a kid in central Indiana in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's you knew the local kid's TV show stars of Channel 4: Janie, Cowboy Bob, and Peggy. If your parents let you stay up late to watch scary movies, you also know Sammy Terry and his evil laugh.

Famous Faces of Indy's WTTV-4 tells the story of how these characters came to be, why the television landscape favored these types of shows at the time and why they are no longer around nowadays.

Getting to know a little about each of the actual people behind the TV characters

was a lot of fun. Sammy Terry - an all-around TV guy and the owner of a music store. Janie - an elementary school teacher. Cowboy Bob - a musician and a TV cameraman who got a big break.

Besides the big names, the book also tells about Brian (Jerry) Reynolds who started at WTTV while he was still in high school and soon enough was writing and producing for the various live action shows on WTTV. It was a small station and everyone had multiple jobs. That could be a burden, but Reynolds looked at it as a lot of opportunities.

Other personalities featured are Peggy of the "Popeye and Peggy" show and "Peggy and the Vantastics" (on WTHR) and the three different young ladies that played the role of Commander KC - the last of the WTTV characters.

This was an enjoyable read, if not a particularly deep one. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE FAMOUS FACES of INDY'S WTTV-4: SAMMY TERRY, COWBOY BOB, JANIE and MORE by Julie Young.

TURTLES ALL the WAY DOWN (audiobook) by John Green

Published in 2017 by Listening Library.
Read by Kate Rudd.
Duration: 7 hours, 12 minutes.
Unabridged.

High School students Aza and Daisy are best friends living in Indianapolis, Indiana. They are also investigating the mysterious disappearance of a billionaire who lives on the other side of the White River - the rich side of the river that doesn't flood.

Well, they investigate when they aren't going to school, eating at Applebee's, studying, working (Daisy) or keeping appointments with the therapist (Aza).

Aza has obsessive thoughts - they crowd out everything else when they come, and lately they've been coming at her hard and fast.

It turns out that Aza knows the son of the missing billionaire and when she and Daisy run into him while they are investigating, it seems like there might be a spark between this boy and Aza...

John Green is one of my favorite authors, which is weird because I have only read two of his books (this one and The Fault in Our Stars). But, I've seen multiple interviews with him since his adopted hometown is my adopted hometown - Indianapolis. I love the fact that he lives here to be an anonymous dad in the crowd. I also love the fact that he puts out entertaining educational videos with his brother and I love the way that he conducts himself professionally. 

The author, John Green

And, I love the fact that he wrote this book about a character with a mental illness. He wrote it because he shares a lot of the struggles that his character Aza has.

But, reading about Aza is exhausting. It is informative, but sometimes a struggle to get through this book.

Also, this book seemed like a weird mish-mash. It is partly a mystery, partly a romance, partly a coming-of-age friendship book and largely seeing the world through the eyes of a person with obsessive thoughts. But, the mystery in the story seems forced - very contrived.

A real positive, though, are his accurate descriptions of Indianapolis and its geography. There really is an Applebee's where he puts it in this story. The White River really is in trouble because of sewage and Indianapolis is currently building a giant sewer overflow tunnel to deal with it. Also, his Star Wars references are spot-on. And, Aza's mom is a teacher and she always seems to be grading papers. This teacher appreciates that bit of reality in a novel.

Still, despite all of this positives, this one gets just 3 stars out of 5 from me. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: TURTLES ALL the WAY DOWN by John Green.

Note: This book showed up on a "banned book" list in Texas. Ugh.
Udpate: It also was placed on a banned book list in Florida.