You'll say that we've got nothing in common/No common ground to start from/And we're falling apart

Truly, I don't think Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and Cat's Cradle have ANYTHING in common, at all. Well, aside from the fact that I rather enjoyed both of them. But thematically and stylistically, they are rather dissimilar.

First, dear Miss Pettigrew. What a fun read. I had seen the movie before, (and reading this again annoyed me that it is not available on Netflix Instant Watch, because I have such a hard time working through my DVD queue, and Pushing Daisies is available to watch instantly and I don't care about that; sigh). This is one of those ones where there were aspects of each that I enjoyed, but neither is the obvious winner of being superior. For example, I liked that some of the characters in the book were more nuanced, but I enjoyed the romance more in the movie.

There isn't really all that much to say about it, though. It's a very fun read, but that's really it. Many laugh-out-loud moments, and some very clever dialogue, but not much to really reflect on.

I think I am starting to get a better sense of Vonnegut's style. I definitely enjoyed Cat's Cradle more than Slaughter-House Five, for what that is worth. I continue to be fascinated by these authors who always or almost always frame their stories as being narrated by an author working on a story; in this case, it worked because the author actually becomes part of the story, but still.

This book was also quite funny, of course, albeit in a rather dark way most of the time. Generally I enjoy satire, so this was up my alley in many ways. It took a bit for me to really be engaged, pretty much up until the plane piece. Once that got going, I read the rest of it quite quickly. Again, I feel like I should have more to say on this one (confession time, I'm running behind and have read several in the interim; what can I say? Work has been more manic than usual).

Random thoughts (in an attempt to make this post be a descent length):

• It might be interesting at some point to do a paper on various made-up religions/theologies/philosophies in different books.
• It's probably helpful to have some understanding of the nuclear arms race/development of the atom bomb (but then, who doesn't, really?).
• Clearly Slaughter-House Five was an exemplar, not an outlier.
• Apparently, Leonardo DiCaprio's production company has optioned this (thanks, Wikipedia), so maybe we'll be able to do a film comparison at some point! I wonder who would play Mona? Maybe Olga Kurylenko?