Cat's Cradle

I opened Cat's Cradle to start reading it and I saw the table of contents. There are 127 chapters. I was surprised because the book did not seem to have that many pages. Well, I know now that the chapters are just short. Definately something cool about the book is that each chapter is not just numbered- each one has its own title.

The story is told by a journalist who is writing a book about one of the scientists who helped create the atomic bomb. The book will be about what the scientist and his family were doing on the day the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Felix Hoenikker, the scientist, has a unique personality, so do his kids, maybe because they had to live with him. We find out that Dr. Hoenikker invented something even deadlier than the atomic bomb before his death, called ice-nine which will freeze all the water in the world if it touches any ocean or river that runs into the ocean. Anyway, Dr. Hoenikker died and his three kids split up the ice-nine and took it with them. Newt, a midget and medical school dropout, Angela, a clarinet player, and Frank, a loser who is sort of an architect, all have a bit of the ice-nine.

The journalist and those three all end up on an incredibly poor island named San Lorenzo where everyone follows a religion called Bokononism, created by Lionel Boyd Johnson. The natives pronounced his name Bokonon because they cannot speak well. All of the characters who are visiting the island interact with each other and with some of the people who live there to make an intesting story. The book mainly is about the absurdity of the modern world, some examples are the atomic bomb, religions that only make humanity worse off, and people that think everyone who comes from Indiana share a special bond as "hoosiers."

Cat's Cradle is funny, the characters are interesting, it is thought provoking, and nicely enough it is easy to read. I would recommend it to all my friends!