I have read every Kurt Vonnegut book ever written

[SingSong]

I started young, read them a few times, and left most of them in my sisters basement when I decided to see the rest of the world.

I just watched the movie "Breakfast of Champions"

A great little novel, a superb movie (even if Bruce Willis is the lead character).

Anyone else love Kurt Vonnegut?

(Added bonus question: what did his son write that was also great?)

AAAhhhhh

The posts...........the numbers..........they all fade in the rear view mirror.

[SmileyBoy]

1. I read "Dead-eye Dick".

Awesome book. It was the only Vonnegut book I read.

[SingSong]

7. If you liked that then try everything else written

by him. He has stories that sometimes seem simplistic, but the more you look at them, the more they give you.

[Forkboy]

2. Read them all as well

many times.Redbeard is the only novel to make me cry.

[Fenris]

4. Bluebeard?

If so, then I too shed a tear reading that one.

[SingSong]

6. One of his later ones

but he put a lot of effort into that one! Thanks for remembering.

[Forkboy]

14. Yes...brain cramp

have pirates on me mind :D

[Emboldened Chimp]

3. I read Cat's Cradle

and I'm sad to say that I didn't like it. Turned me off to reading Vonnegut in the future, actually. Don't know what it was; we just didn't click.

[SingSong]

5. Give it another try?

He has themes running throughout his works, but they can, once they grab you, not let your mind go.

Time and how it is perceived and how we try to deceive it? Just one for thought.

[alfredo]

8. Mark Vonnegut Eden Express

[SingSong]

10. ding ding ding!!!!!

That's it, and such a great book.

[alfredo]

21. Great book.

[kodi]

9. and kilgore trout's?

.

[SingSong]

12. We might have to look into another universe

or another time in another universe for that one.

He deserved every award he never got!

[kodi]

15. what?? KV has written numerous books under the name kilgore trout.

i am looking as I type at my copy of "venus on the half-shell," the epic science fiction saga of The Space Wanderer, Simon Wagstaff (he of the wagging staff).

late comers!

[Twillig]

20. ? That was written by Phillip Jose Farmer

http://www.supersphere.com/Zinetropa/Article.html?ID=OOK&NAME=trout

[alfredo]

19. Venus on a half shell

[Fenris]

11. The first one I read was "Bluebeard"

In seventh grade. I had just completed The Catcher in the Rye, which exposed me to the world of literature that had the ability to really speak to the individual reader. My dad suggested I read Bluebeard as a sort of follow up. I was instantly hooked. Perhaps, a partial list of those I have read...

Bluebeard
Slapstick
Mother Night
Welcome to the Monkey House
Slaughterhouse Five
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Cat's Cradle
Deadeye Dick
Hocus Pocus


I have yet to read Breakfast, Player Piano, Galapagos, Jailbird, The Sirens of Titan, and his short fiction collections, although those are on my list.

[SingSong]

13. bless you and spread the word

Rosewater was not wrong! Trout deserves all the accolades!

[seventhson]

16. I met Vonnegut (Twice) and...

had a chance to talk to him a little bit.

Once he was smoking outside the building at Smith College where I was attending a conference on writers and artists fleeing Hitler during the Holocaust.

The other time he was dedicating a library at a NE college.

He is getting cranky and is a little sad.

But his anger and outrage at injustice was simply beautiful...

[seventhson]

17. PS - I started with "Monkey House" but Slaughterhouse 5

and the movie too

blew my mind...

He opened new vistas and horizons.

Old age sucks, I imagine...

God bless you Kurt and thanks

[SingSong]

18. Vonnegut's always been a little cranky

but his sense of justice, due to knowledge of the results of injustice, is an adequate counterweight.

[CanuckAmok]

22. Bonus answer: Eden Express, by son Mark.

Love Kurt's stuff, and have enjoyed every movie adaptation of his work. If you can find a copy of the Canadian production of "Mother Night", starring Nick Nolte, it's a great rent!

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

23. I LOVE all things Vonnegut..the books, the movies that have

been made and have seen him speak several times.

I seem to be alone in this but Galapagos is my all time favorite.

In case you missed it this is an excellent interview from IN THESE TIMES from his 80th birthday.

Here is my favorite SNIP from the interview:

My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we’ve lost reason to hope?

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C

Enjoy!

[Forkboy]

24. Galapagos is my 2nd fave

especially the part about the blue-footed boobies mating :)

[eyesroll]

25. Mother Night is probably my favorite...

I read Slaughterhouse-5 in 10th grade -- FOR SCHOOL. (We could pick from a list, but that this was even on the list impressed me.)

And I do need to give praise where it is due -- in Breakfast of Champions, he indicated that an asterisk looked like a certain body part.

Now, we use that * for another reason. It still fits.