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Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I'd have never picked it up if I hadn't been bored and trying to kill time, but it really put life in a new perspective. Genuinely think it's made everything lighter since reading that one.
Is it like his other books? Slaughterhouse 5 was totally and completely terrible. IMO.
Yep, that one's extremely boring, but the other ones are great. I think that's a relatively popular opinion.
Sheesh I guess I'll have to try again. I didn't like that it seemed shallow and... without a plan? Like you get some mild character explanation through time but it is mostly just kind of surface level/shock value weird.
I think the most character developed Vonnegut books are Galapagos and Breakfast of champions. I also just read Mother night, which has many thought-out characters (I was fascinated by Resi Noth, who isn't a main character by any stretch of imagination).
Edit: But yes, the characters are weird and cynically exaggerated in most of his works.
I actually haven't read any of his other books. When I was in high school Slaughterhouse 5 was one of the default books on class book report lists, so I assumed he was a dry, dusty, old-timey author. One of the things that surprised me reading Timequake was finding out he has a daughter my age.
It's a very weird book. But it's brilliant and touching and heartbreaking and eye-rolling kind of funny. He's writing in his own voice. The setup is that "Timequake" was a draft novel he never finished.... I'm not sure if that's true on some level, or just a literary device. He says that in that novel the Timequake occurred in 2001, and pushed everyone, everywhere, backward to 1991.
But... not to change anything. Every single thing plays out exactly as it did the first time around. Everyone ended up in some kind of conscious "autopilot" with no free will, forced to repeat every event, every choice, every moment they had lived over those 10 years all over again, conscious they're stuck in some kind of loop/nightmare watching and doing but unable to do even the tiniest thing differently.
Seems like it would make a horribly boring, pointless scifi story... but as a literary device, it's amazing. It's him looking back on life and coming to terms with getting older and not being able to change the things we've fucked up. One of the things that stuck with me the most was him saying that no one asked to be born, no one got an instruction manual for this "life" and "self-aware consciousness" nonsense, no one has any real idea what the hell we're doing. Every one of us is just making it up as we go. We never got a chance to practice, just pushed out into this shit with no warning at all.
My parents weren't the best, and I've definitely had my own relationship issues. It really helped put existence into perspective. It's not a book you read for a story, it's just sort of his life... but it's the parts that pretty much anyone over 40 is sure to relate to.