This is the seventeenth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Our next book will be Stories of Your Life and Others at the end of September.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.

And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like sideloading, messaging and friendship. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was eagle-eyed.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Here is the schedule for the upcoming year

Last week in August - Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut,

Last week in September - Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Last week in October - The Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine by Deborah Blum,

Last week in November - We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis Taylor,

December break for the holidays.

Last week in January - Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bissen,

Last week in February - The Truth by Terry Pratchett

Last week in March - The Metamorphosis by Kafka,

Last week in April - The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See,

Last week in May - Pnin by Nabokov,

Last week in June - How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Wexler,

Last week in July - A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers,

Last week in August - Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Last week in September - Dr. No by Ian Fleming

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.