Charlie鈥檚 Year in Books

What did you read this year?

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2024

8,978

pages read

books read

Charlie

Shortest Book

112

pages

Longest Book

464

pages

Average book length in 2024

289

pages

Most Shelved

5,430,951

people also shelved

Least Shelved

people also shelved

Charlie鈥檚 average rating for 2024

3.7

Highest Rated on 欧宝娱乐

4.47 average

Charlie鈥檚 first review of the year

really liked it

Such a beautiful writer searching for meaning in the pursuit of his obsession. McGuane encourages his readers to do the same.

颁贬础搁尝滨贰鈥橲 2024 BOOKS

it was amazing

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman

The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

it was amazing

Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid t... by Anton Treuer

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

it was amazing

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

it was amazing

Charlie鈥檚 last review of the year

it was amazing

When Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007 I vowed to reread "Bluebeard", my favorite Vonnegut. It is somewhat autobiographical, painting a picture of a man who is uncomfortable with his talent and unsure of what his soul has to say. It was when I was rereading "Bluebeard" that I remembered reading, for the first time, another book by Kurt Vonnegut. A book that changed my soul and the way I looked at the novel.

In the same way "Ulysses" transformed the liter When Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007 I vowed to reread "Bluebeard", my favorite Vonnegut. It is somewhat autobiographical, painting a picture of a man who is uncomfortable with his talent and unsure of what his soul has to say. It was when I was rereading "Bluebeard" that I remembered reading, for the first time, another book by Kurt Vonnegut. A book that changed my soul and the way I looked at the novel.

In the same way "Ulysses" transformed the literary world by using stream-of-consciousness, "Slaughterhouse-Five" transformed fiction by melding fact with fantasy. As a bookstore owner, where would you place "Slaughterhouse-Five"? In the fiction section? In the fantasy section? Non-Fiction section? It does not really matter except that it deserves a placed next to the most important books ever written.

The melding between fantasy and nonfiction opened my eyes to the world around me. I remember reading "Slaughterhouse-Five" for the first time and I could not believe that it did not follow a time-line. Like his main character, Billy Pilgrim, who was abducted by aliens who experience time non-linearly, Vonnegut creates a novel whose time-line can not be mapped. I loved this! I realized that I did not even know I was placing limits on what a novel could be.

As the moments of Billy Pilgrim鈥檚 life are being pieced back together, a terrible yet beautiful picture of our world emerges. Underscoring everything is what happened to him during World War II. Each death is met with the same sentiment, 鈥渟o it goes鈥�. Vonnegut does not judge, he only shows.

It was not important that Billy Pilgrim really did become unstuck in time. What is important is that what was happening around him was a senseless as if he had become unstuck in time. The bombing of Dresden wiped out a beautiful city and killed 130,000 people. Is that fiction? Shouldn鈥檛 it be fiction? Vonnegut鈥檚 blurred lines between fact, fiction, and fantasy bring his anti-war message home with the clarity of a true artist, an artist who, with the brush of his pen, opened his soul for all to see. ...more

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