Reviews tagging 'Excrement'

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut

19 reviews

celery's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body shaming, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Medical content, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

goongus's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

I was hesitant to start this after DNFing catch-22 but the inclusion of aliens turned it from war satire to batshit insane. The second half of the book gets funnier too.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Genocide, Misogyny, Sexual content, Blood, Excrement, Fire/Fire injury, and Colonisation

mossbird's review against another edition

dark emotional funny reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

So it goes.

An incredible recounting of the firebombing of Dresden and an emotional retelling of how people change after intense trauma that left me giggling at parts and soberly understanding exactly what Billy Pilgrim was experiencing at others. Vonnegut pulls no punches when describing the atrocities of war and spares no detail in depicting exactly how it has fractured the mind of his protagonist, and the effects that fracturing has. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Violence, and War

Moderate: Gore, Excrement, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Minor: Antisemitism

count_of_carabas's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Infidelity, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Excrement, Vomit, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Dementia, Trafficking, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Car accident, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

precise's review against another edition

challenging dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I read Slaughterhouse-Five for the first time in high school. I found all of Vonnegut's work at the time to be highly compelling,  to the point where for my senior quote in high school I chose the quote that is prominently featured in The Sirens of Titan. It is worth mentioning here that I also consider the period from midway through my junior year of high school until the start of my junior year of college to be the absolute lowest point I have experienced or likely will ever experience in my life. 

I reread Slaughterhouse-Five in advance of a trip to the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. I am glad that I did. It definitely enhanced the museum exhibits to see, for example, the ceremonial WWII saber that Vonnegut took home from his service on display (not particularly called out at the museum as such, but mentioned multiple times in the book). 

I also found Slaughterhouse-Five to say much more about trauma and stress than I remembered. It may make sense that I didn't remember this - see above re lowest point in my life when I first read it - for all that I experienced stress and trauma as a teenager, I don't remember a lot from then anymore. A naive assumption one might hold about trauma is that Billy revisits the worst times in his life over and over. Instead, he travels at random through things that definitely happened in his life and things that might not have, a much more nuanced metaphor for feeling adrift and like agency has been taken from you in the wake of a traumatic experience. I was also reminded, having also read The Body Keeps The Score less than a year ago, of how recent our modern mental health constructs are and how post-traumatic stress treatment was not really available to Vonnegut's generation. 

Overall - the book is fairly short, it's not satisfying and it's not meant to be. It does a good job of capturing a specific mood, and is worth reading for that even though it's not a pleasant mood.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War

Moderate: Cursing, Death, Excrement, Medical trauma, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Injury/Injury detail

I listed a lot of content warnings to be on the safe side but I would not warn most people about them explicitly before recommending this book

pershie13's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I tore through this book in less than 24 hours and absolutely loved it. When I picked up this classic, all I knew was that it was anti-war and centered on the destruction of Dresden, which piqued my interest immediately. What I didn't know was that Kurt Vonnegut would use science fiction and time travel to drive his point home. This book is semi-autobiographical and draws off of his experiences as a real-life prisoner of war in Dresden during World War II, which was interesting to consider while reading this book. While the characters were not real, they were based on people he knew, and that made it all the more interesting to consider what happened in the book and the toll that war took on these characters. The Tralfamadorian philosophy in this book was interesting to consider and clashed with a lot of the ways I was thinking about the story, and considering that way of thinking can provide a numbing viewpoint to the concept of war, especially a large destruction like the one that occurred in Dresden near the end of the war. This book was challenging and got me thinking about the philosophy of war, free will, and death all at once. I now understand why this is such a popular novel and a classic that will live on for so long. I loved the writing style and both the humor and darkness behind the book. I appreciate Vonnegut writing this novel over two decades after his real experiences as a POW, and I was surprised to see the portrayal of PTSD symptoms in the post-war sections as well. It is difficult to discuss the book, as it occurred in a non-linear fashion and constantly tore me all across Billy Pilgrim's life, but as you travel throughout the decades, the main themes start to come out and portray the big picture that Vonnegut is portraying. This is one of my favorite classics that I have read, and it makes me want to consider dipping into science fiction more frequently. I was pleasantly surprised by my love for the book, and not for the reasons why I initially decided to read it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Cursing, Death, Mental illness, Sexual content, Murder, and War

Moderate: Body shaming, Fatphobia, Gore, Gun violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Violence, Excrement, Vomit, Trafficking, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, and Deportation

Minor: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Infidelity, Rape, Sexual violence, Suicide, Blood, Medical content, Religious bigotry, Car accident, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

megb64's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Grief, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Fatphobia, Infidelity, Vomit, and Pregnancy

agw622's review against another edition

challenging dark sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

It's weird. It's so odd, and I find Billy such an unappealing unreliable narrator. It jumps so much that you never really get a good pace of reading. I personally am not a big fan of an unreliable narrator, and I also dislike spastic time jumping. This made it an unpleasant read for me. Although I appreciate what it is conveying, I don't think I will reread it nor recommend it in good faith.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Genocide, Gore, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Violence, Excrement, Antisemitism, Grief, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury

frogpants's review against another edition

dark funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Violence, Xenophobia, and War

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Confinement, Excrement, and Vomit

Minor: Car accident

dlsmk's review against another edition

dark emotional fast-paced

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Cursing, Death, Gore, Infidelity, Racial slurs, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Excrement, Car accident, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Alcohol, and War