quarrel | So it goes.

I did something weird on my trip back from Pittsburgh (more on that next entry): I bought a book. Sad to say, I haven't bought a book in, like, forever. I honestly can't recall the title of the last fiction book I purchased, nor the last one I read once you discount the Lone Wolf & Cub compilations I borrowed from an officemate. My usual choice of airport reading material is Wired magazine, but I haven't seen it in airport newsstands lately. Pittsburgh International has a large central shopping center at the central "X" of its four main terminals, and one of the shops is a bookstore, which I wandered into after exhausting the magazine stands.

So, I decided to pick up a book. Kurt Vunnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, to be exact. I figure it's famous, and the author isn't a hack, and it's science fiction (although it was in the just-plain-fiction category, which I thought was odd), and it's about war...it'll be a good read, right?

Apparently it was. I finished it on the flight home. Granted, it turned out to be a much shorter piece than it looks -- being "classic fiction" instead of "pulp sci-fi", it got nice, large print, but still... This does not happen. I am not a fast reader. Quite the opposite, in fact. I am forced to conclude that it was, in fact, a very good book.

And, yes, in case you're wondering, it was still topical. War is war, even when it's from fifty years and two generations ago. Even when it's good guys versus bad, not everything that happens as a result is laudible. Not everyone who fights on the side of Justice and Light enjoys it. Not everyone that dies deserves to.

"And he told me about the concentration camps, and about how the Germans had made soap and candles out of the fat of dead Jews and so on.

"All I could say was, 'I know, I know.

I know.' "