Remembering Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut passed away this morning at the age of 84. How sad. He had apparently fallen last week and suffered brain damage from the fall. Vonnegut is known as one of those great, classic modern authors. He wrote Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, and Welcome to the Monkey House among many others. I haven't read any Vonnegut, but he was one of Megan's favorite authors along with Oscar Wilde and Yukio Mishima. And to be in the same boat as the other two make him something special. I'm reading Slaughterhouse Five for the banned books challenge, but was going to read Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon next. Instead, I'm bumping Slaughterhouse Five up to the next spot in memory of Vonnegut. Though I haven't read anything by him yet, he'll still be missed. He's been an inspiration to American literature and to people close to me.

In other book news, I've decided to take a break from the challenges. I need to throw in a book to read just for fun (not to say challenges aren't fun). So I've decided that next up will be Colleen Gleason's The Rest Falls Away since it's the newest book in my possession and is not being read for a challenge. I'm so nervous that I'm not going to finish my challenges. Tolkien's new book comes out on April 17th, so I have to read that one and Brandon Mull's next book in the Fablehaven series comes out on May 1st. That still gives me plenty of time until the end of June, but I'm graduating and going to Mexico with Megan for the latter part of May and reading is probably not one of the things I'll be doing in Mexico. Though of course I'll bring a couple of books along. Jeesh...is reading supposed to be this overwhelming ;)