Indiespensable #20 Arrived!

I received my first package from Powell's last night! I was not disappointed in the least - everything was shrink wrapped in place and arrived without any damage. The volume of I Curse The River of Time is beautiful - I adore books in slipcases! And the bonus gifts are nice, some pre-release chapters and a delicious smelling gourmet salt. I love the idea of this club. The books are sometimes volumes I would buy, but frequently they are unfamiliar and something that I might not chose for myself. The supplemental gifts are a nice little treat, and best of all they are not something I would typically buy for myself. Sometimes the best "gifts" are the things you'd never think to buy! I've never belonged to a book club of any sorts, as I like to read on my own (agonizingly slow) schedule and my reading preferences are also a rather narrow band of fiction. I suspect that this subscription will be a good experience for me, pulling me out of my normal comfort zone and into new types of fiction, new authors, and even experiencing new treats.

As for my pledge to soldier on through this stack of summer reading: I am halfway through Kurt Vonnegut's posthumous Armageddon in Retrospect, a collection of short writings around the theme of war. I am utterly embarrassed to admit it's my first read of anything by Vonnegut, and it's left me speechless. The stories are short but incredible, and I've had to take a break after one of the stories in particular. But the most impressive bit of writing is in his own letter sent home after being rescued from the POW camp in Germany. Everything about its sparse language and dry tone repeats in his later stories, but here it is especially powerful. He is a man who understands the unlikelihood of his own survival and the inhumanity of war and that reflects heavily in the remaining stories.