miguel-se7

The last couples of days have been pretty hectic, between work, traveling, family celebrations and some other projects that are still shaping up, there's been little time for reading. Funnily enough, one of the reasons I haven't had time to read is due to a weekly reading club I attend. Our club focus on short stories and this week it was up to me to decide the featured short stories.

After some consideration I decided to share two short stories by Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron and Look at the Birdie, which I will be linking below.

Vonnegut (1922-2008) was an American author known by his satirical writing style coupled with black humor, as well as his lectures on writing. If you are interested in writing you might be familiar with his theory on the shape of stories, if not you might like to give it a check. His experiences during world war II hugely influenced his views and the themes of his stories.

Now, onto the stories. Both are fairly short reads, spanning around 5 pages longs, touching upon deep topics while maintaining their humorous style.

Harrison Bergeron is set on a dystopian future where everyone is equal to one another, this is achieved by enforcing disabilities on people with above average capabilities, a clear warning of what can happen if we mistake equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.

Look at the Birdie is one of the short stories included in the book with the same name. It follows a short conversation in a bar between two unnamed men, one of whom claims to be a therapist who has invented a novel way of murdering people.

Both short stories are really interesting and provide plenty of food for thought. If you are looking for a book rather than short stories you should look up Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five or The Sirens of Titan all three of them are pretty good reads. If you would like to try a different author/genre you can check more recommendations here, else feel free to visit my other posts for some book reviews.

You can find some of my favorite quotes by Kurt Vonnegut below:

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