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4 - 2, & 3 Slaughterhouse Five The tenth night of being on the train they reach their destination. They are given frozen jackets from previos prisioners. Billy’s is the only civilian one and it is tiny. They are all in pretty bad shape. They are made to take off all of their clothes and take a shower. They all get dressed and their names are taken down so their families will know they are alive. There are mainly malnourished Russians in the intainment camp, but there are a few Englishmen. They are liked by the Germans because they make war look glamourous and fun. Their tummies are washboards, they have been working out and hoarding food. They got soap, a candle, a feast and a show ready for the American visitors. When one of them sees Billy with his jacket on they told him not to let the Germans treat him like that. So, that is what happened in order. While in the shower he time traveled to a time when he was a happy, loved baby being held by his mother. I am thinking that his mind wanders to the past to comfort him. How he wanders forward in time I don’t know. It could have been added by Vonnegut later, when he was writing this book about his experience. Then he is with the Tralfmadorians and Billy is talking with them. When Billy mentions “free will” the Tralamadorian says that out of all 31 inhibited planets it has visited and in the reports for one hundred more, no where else but Earth is there talk of “free will”. Personally I belive that there is life out there, but I refuse to think that we are the only ones with a specific idea. Well, I guess it could be possible, but maybe I think it impossible becaue the Tralfamadorians are hard to believe. Billy travels into the future where he had been agreed upon that he is going mad. I wonder if this reflects that Vonnegut felt like he was going crazy after the war. P.S. thanks for letting me know about the changes for class : )

4-1 Slaughter-House Five I didn’t really mention it enought before, but Billy time travels. The soldiers come and capture the two. Other soldiers shoot down the two scouts who left. Weary’s shoes were taken from him and traded with some crap shoes of one of the soldiers, it later kills him because gangren started in his feet and that killed him. Everyone in his train car knew he wanted to be avenged and his killer was: Billy Pilgrim. The aliens came to get him the night of his daughters wedding. He asked, “Why me?” and was told there is no why. He made money in optomety after the war and his doctor told him to take daily naps to try and make Billy’s random tear fits go away. His son was fighting in vietnam and Billy can’t remember how old he is or what year it is; he has no lust for living. He is in a train car and no one likes him because he kicks and ect. when he sleeps. He is an outcast. I think that two cars will be against him once they reach their destination; the car he was in because of his sleeping, and the car Weary was in because Weary told all of them so they knew that Billy killled him. It is going to be tough for him. I think he would have been having suicidal thoughts by now, but none are written about.

3-3 Slaughter-House Five Billy went to a talk-radio show and told his listeners about becoming unstuck in time. He claimed he was kidnapped by flying saucer in 1967 and displayed in a zoo and mated with another earthling. Some people from his hometown heard him and told his daughter who got upset. He wrote a letter to the newspaper that was published. The 2 feet, green Tralfamadorians can see in 4 dimensions and explained to Billy that when someone dies, they are still very alive in moments. Now he is talking about him being a little nobody in WW2 without even having G.I. boots. He was slow and one of two of the four men he was with ditched him and Mr. Weary, an 18 year old G.I. Weary just began to beat up Billy when up come 5 german soldiers and a police dog. I assume they will be taken captive and sent to the slaughterhouse.

3-2 Slaughter-House Five Now we are told about how Billy Pilgrim grew up. He was tall and went into optometry and got married and had two children who grew up. Billy was in an accident and hit his head and his wife died so he was all alone. His daughter found him crazy and had taken on his responsibilites that he neglected while writing this book. If Vonnegut was tring to stay true to his life, he dosen’t like his daughter. He started publishing things about his trip to planet Tralfamadore. More about that later....

3-1 Slaughter-House Five The first chapter doesn’t really seem to make sense. I can’t tell if it is Vonnegut talking about his experience, or Billy Pilgrim. I am pretty sure that it is Vonnegut, but somehow that doesn’t seem right. He said it was really hard to write about Dresden. There weren’t tons of memories that just flowed from his memory. He met up with an old war buddy to reminise and the wife was angry. She thought books about wars helped bring them on. He told her he would name the book “The Children’s Crusade”, which is actually in the front of the book, subtitled, “A Duty-Dance Wtih Death.” This title would reflect that the war had been fought by them when they were still children reather then grown men.

2-3 Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.) * Born November 11, 1922, Vonnegut Jr. wrote many pessimistic and satrical novels. The one he is best know for is Slaughterhouse-Five, published in 1969, which is what I plan to read. The book is based on his experiences from being a World War II prosioner-of-war held at Dresden, Germany. He had been studing biochemistry at Cornell, when he volunteered for military service in 1943. He was taken prisioner of war at the Battle of the Bulge and transported to Dresden. He was a prisioner in a meat-locker under a slaughterhouse during the durration of the United States Air Focre’s air raids of Dresden in Febuarry of 1944. Vonnegut was one of the few to survive. Later, Soviet troops repatriated him to the Unites States where he studied Anthropology. He married in 1945 and had three children of their own and adopted the three kids of his sister. He divorced his wife in 1979 and married again. He attempted suicide in 1984. He has written plays, essays, critics, and TV plays along with novels.

2-2 The private life of the cat who... Qwill talks about how he became intrested in rhyming the first time. As a child he realized that couplets could be funny and a little naughty. Now, he writes limericks and encourages the others in Moose County too. He wrote in his column once about one of Yum Yum quirks, asking readers if their cats did humorous thing too. His replies showed him that is isn't the cat who has humor, it's more that their owners do or don't. More cool koko leads up to my favorite..."A dog by any other name would smell like a dog." Cats, along with pretty much everything else with a name it seems to me, have a story behind each name. Qwill doesn't approve of naming cats after famous people, or calling them by peoples names either. I am thinking that part of Braun, the author, is showing through here. The rest of the book doesn't tell me that I missed anything, it just was a reminder of some outstanding happenings from the cats' lives. Next, I plan to read SlaughterHouse-Five. I hope it isn't too depressing or down beat for me to read.

The Private Life Of The Cat Who 2-1 Qwill wrote in the newspaper telling his good readers about one of Yum Yum’s quirks that he found amusing. Many writers replied and it just proved that it was more the person who did or didn’t have humor than the cats. The book mentioned how Qwill had become interested in rhyming wording when in elementary. Starting with couplets and now writing limericks in the backwood, Qwill shows his wit and sense of humor. More cool koko comes in with my favorite “A dog by any other name would smell like a dog.” The rest of the book is about the fine naming of cats and their stories behind a few examples, koko’s wonderful sense of time and how he gets everyone to leave on his time. It was really a short collection of different piceces of the history so far. I wasn’t missing any key factors, but there was some aditional information and rhymes about cats and such that weren’t in her series.

The Private Life Of The Cat Who... 1-3 The book is supposed to be blurps from Qwill’s journal. It opened with the story of how he came about aquiring a siamese cat while house sitting for a friend. Then it tells of how Yum Yum came to join the family who so happened to be being attacked when she was came for to be rescued and taken home. He had never owned cats before and tells of how he had to get used to his cats demands. He learned how to understand KoKo’s crazy actions and realized that KoKo had sixty whiskers instead of the normal 48 on each side, including the “eyebrows”. This fact makes Qwill think that his cat is super telepathic. Along with having a “death howl”, koko knows three seconds before the phone rings and he also knows who it is. Then he talks about his relocation to the North where his cats soon became a common topic in his twice weely column at “The Moose County Something”, the local newspaper. Also included is an instalment from “cool koko’s almanac”, a spin off of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack. My favorites were “There’s a destiny tath leads a hungry cat to he right doorstep,” and, “Home is where the sardines are.”

Lillian Jackson Braun 1-2 Braun is a novelist who has written over twenty-five books in the “Cat who” series along with three books with collected short stories. The book I will read is “The Private life of the ChatWho...Tales of Koko and Yum Yum [from the Journal of James Mackintosh Qwilleran].” She has written this book as if she is James Qwilleran, from her series, writting in his journal. I have been reading her series and it mentioned this book in it, but I she published this one prior to the last of her books that I read, “The cat who went bananas.” I am looking forward to this book because I may have been missing some information in the last books i read.

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