I want to not be illiterate. Sometimes I’m close. In an effort to be, you know, smarter - I’m trying to read real books. I picked up Slaughterhouse-Five about a month ago along with several other books (2 Klosterman books on pop culture, Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, a book about the 2005-2006 Suns season, etc).

I read all the candy first. The only real piece of “classic” literature still felt too much like homework. I started reading Slaughterhouse a couple of weeks ago, in brief snippets before falling asleep. So I’m only maybe fifty pages in. I would be farther, but a new Raymond Feist sci-fi fantasy book came out, and I HAD to read that immediately, as is my tradition every spring when he releases a new book. I’ll do the same thing at the beginning of the fall when the new Terry Brooks book is available. For the past few years I’ve only read these two series. Two books a year, tailored for the adolescent boy in all of us. Heather says I only read 7th grader books.

Now Vonnegut is dead, and I’m fifty pages in (fifty seven actually). Enough to know I like it a lot, and enough to grasp nuances in the obituaries I’ve been reading. Or at least enough to understand what the hell people are talking about when they reference Slaughterhouse-Five. And every obit seems to mention it if not in the first, then the second paragraph. Sometimes in the headline. But some mention details that I don’t want to know yet, being only fifty seven pages in.

So now I’m avoiding Vonnegut obituaries because they may contain spoilers.

I’m setting off on a week long business trip today. I’m bringing Slaughterhouse-Five, but I will not read it on the plane. I’m not going to be that guy. (i.e. The guy who pretends to read real literature in public to impress strangers but who really only reads 7th grader books)