Rating: 
Summary: AMAZING
Review: It is very rarely that I read a book, even one this short, from cover to cover without pausing. It really blows my mind that people from TN and high school students did not enjoy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting novel of life and war.
Review: Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time. He can flip around randomly throughout his life whereever he wants to go. He serves as a chaplain's assistant in World War II, is captured by Germans, survives the largest massacre in European history, the fire bombing of dresden. It's so ironically funny at times. It was interesting, finding out how billy came up with his delusions.
Rating:
Summary: Possibly his finest work.
Review: This is fantastic! I first read this in a library when I was in college. Vonnegut is absolutely brilliant, and stands alone in his field as arguably the finest satirist in the world. I found myself laughing out loud on several occasions. This is great stuff. I read Vonnegut regularly and love it every time. Naturally, its a little depressing... but brilliant nonetheless.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but ODD
Review: This book contains some very interesting thoughts and social commentaries on war, but the timeline, though interesting, skips around too much for my liking. I would reccomend this book to those interested in a thought provoking read, but not to those who have trouble understanding complex plots and metaphorical themes.
Rating: 
Summary: At the risk of being IMMENSELY unpopular...
Review: I would describe this as the worst book of Vonnegut's career.Want a coherent plot? this is not the book for you. Characters whose actions make a degree of sense? Nope. Excellent examples of Vonnegut's biting wit? Not really. Seeing a trend? Slaughterhouse 5, while almost univerally hailed as Vonnegut's best work, is utterly bad. I do not know if Vonnegut was attempting to be an absurdist (if so, he didn't succeed) or whether it was merely a cathartic exercise for taking away his pain from the horrific events he witnessed in the Second World War. Whatever the excuse, it was not ever and is not now a good book. When I first read this book, I stopped reading Vonnegut for well over a year. I could hardly believe that the man who created such well crafted short fiction as "Harrison Bergeron" and such witty novels as Slapstick could do something this incredibly without redeeming value. Its protagonist is an anti-hero of the first rate, yet the reader is expected to sympathize with him. If Billy Pilgrim was intended as another alter-ego of Vonnegut himself, I do not think I would ever want to meet the writer in person, as he would be a let down to his own other works.
Rating:
Summary: Listen:
Review: Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" is a curiosity. It concerns a man named Billy Pilgrim who becomes "unstuck in time," meaning he involuntarily travels back and forth between various episodes in his lifetime, something like temporal schizophrenia. The conventional notion of time is disregarded in this book, so our familiar structure of past, present, and future is in discord with the chronology of the events. As a young man, Billy serves in World War II as a chaplain's assistant. He ends up behind enemy lines with a morbid creep named Roland Weary who educates him about the sickest torture methods known to man. They're captured by German soldiers and taken to a prison camp where Billy is stalked by another creep named Paul Lazzaro. Soon Billy and the other prisoners are shipped into Dresden to be laborers, and for living quarters they are put into an old slaughterhouse marked with the number five. A visiting American-turned-Nazi dignitary attempts to proselytize them just before they are forced to cower in an underground meat locker while Allied aircraft bomb and decimate the city. After the war, Billy becomes an optometrist, marries, raises a family, and lives every semblance of a normal life except, of course, for the time travel. His imagination is fueled by the science fiction novels of a writer named Kilgore Trout, who is no stranger to the concept of time travel. Later, Billy is kidnapped by aliens from a planet called Tralfamadore and exhibited in a zoo on their planet, in an Earthling-accommodating habitat furnished by merchandise the aliens stole from a Sears warehouse in Iowa City. The Tralfamadorians have also kidnapped an Earthling woman, a movie star named Montana Wildhack, to provide Billy with a mate. Keep in mind that these events are not related in chronological order, but rather are intertwined with each other as Billy zaps back and forth between milieus. It's difficult to decipher all of this, but Vonnegut makes it clear in the first chapter that this is an anti-war novel, comparing the Children's Crusade of the Middle Ages to sending teenagers off to fight modern wars. He satirizes the pro-war mentality that rationalizes brutality in the name of dubious ideals, the slaughtering of some to save others. The consequences of war are acceptable only if, like the Tralfamadorians, you have no past, present, or future to account for.
Rating:
Summary: The best kind of literature
Review: Slaughterhouse-Five is a startling novel, startling in its simplicity and complexity and startling in the extreme in its beauty. Certainly this book can't truly be understood by low-level readers or people who can't move beyond plot as being the main point of a book. The plot is next to irrelevant in some ways, and is essential in others. In fact, the entire book is that way, with every aspect being two extremes at once. It's certainly not recommended for everyone, and probably shouldn't be read by anyone who doesn't understand the title and subtitle. This is an extremely complex work, incredibly dense, and should really be considered a work of great literature. Read this book if you want to read something that can change your view on life. It certainly did mine.
Rating:
Summary: like an episode of Seinfeld
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It was my first Vonnegut, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. Perhaps there was more to it, but I just took the book for its face value, without over analyzing every grey little detail. To me, it was just like watching an episode of Seinfeld. It was short (ie sitcom in length), had a main character who conjured images of Kramer, and made liberal use of a catch phrase. So it went.
Rating:
Summary: SH5
Review: This book is way too confusing and jumps around too much! I don't get it and I can't believe that it was on the school reading list! Its by far one of the worst books I have ever read!!!
Rating:
Summary: -
Review: Vonnegut at the top of his form, which is a fresh style compared to most of the tired writers of this century.
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