A Man Without a Country - Kurt Vonnegut

This "memoir of life in George W Bush's America" is, as you'd expect, quirky, angry, and funny, with the author sharing witty and perceptive opinions on socialism, art, politics, religion, relationships, the environment... His view of modern society is pretty bleak (psychopathic personalities are in charge, "we are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial", and it's too late to do anything about it) but he includes a rather beautiful requiem for life on Earth, and urges us, despite this, to "please notice when you are happy", and reflect, as an elderly relative used to, "if this isn't nice, I don't know what is". The most memorable part for me was a brief section on the decline of extended families ("A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It's a terribly vulnerable survival unit.") His analysis that women want "a whole lot of people to talk to [...] about everything" and that most marital arguments can be interpreted as the couple saying to each other, "You are not enough people!" resonated with me during a period where, having just moved abroad, I was expecting my husband to fill the gaps left by my missing friends and listen to everything I wanted to talk about...