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Started by: hvernon on January 19, 2009
Best Kurt Vonnegut Book
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#1
Cats Cradle

Cat's Cradle is a 1963 science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. It explores issues of science, technology, and religion, satirizing the arms race and many other targets along the way. After turning down his original thesis, the University of Chicago, in 1971, awarded Vonnegut his Master's degree in anthropology for Cat's Cradle.[1][2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_Cradle

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#2
Slaughterhouse Five

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death (1969), by Kurt Vonnegut, is a post-modern anti-war science fiction novel dealing with a soldier's (Billy Pilgrim) experiences during World War II and his journeys with time travel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse_five

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#3
Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. Set in the fictional town of Midland City, it is the story of "two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast." One of these men, Dwayne Hoover, is a normal-looking but deeply deranged Pontiac dealer who becomes obsessed with the writings of the other man, Kilgore Trout, taking them for literal truth. Trout, a largely unknown pulp science fiction writer who has appeared in several other Vonnegut novels, looks like a crazy old man but is in fact relatively sane. As the novel opens, Trout journeys toward Midland City to appear at a convention where he is destined to meet Dwayne Hoover and unwittingly inspire him to run amok.

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#4
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine is a novel written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and published in 1965. The plot focuses on Eliot Rosewater, the primary trustee of the philanthropic Rosewater Foundation whom one of the family lawyers, Norman Mushari, is attempting to have declared insane to enable a more distant relative, Fred Rosewater, an insurance salesman from Rhode Island, to gain control.

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#5
Bluebeard

Bluebeard, the Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988) is a 1987 novel by best-selling author Kurt Vonnegut. It is told as a first person narrative and describes the late years of fictional Abstract Expressionist painter Rabo Karabekian, who first appeared, rather briefly, in Breakfast of Champions. Circumstances of the novel bear rough resemblance to the fairy tale of Bluebeard popularized by Charles Perrault. Karabekian mentions this relationship once in the novel.

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#6
Deadeye Dick

The novel's main character, Rudy Waltz, nicknamed Deadeye Dick, commits accidental manslaughter as a child and lives his whole life seeking forgiveness for it. He was so traumatized by the events directly after the murder that he lives life as a "neuter," neither homosexual nor heterosexual. He tells the story of his life as a middle-aged man transplanted in Haiti, which symbolizes New York City, until the end, when the stream of time of the story catches up with him. At this point, he confronts an event that has been suggested and referred to throughout the novel. The generic Midwestern town of Midland City, Ohio (also the setting of Breakfast of Champions) in which Rudy was raised is virtually destroyed by a neutron bomb. At the ending of the book, it appears that Rudy, while he may not have fully come to terms with his actions, has at least come to live with them.

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#7
Player Piano

Player Piano, author Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, was published in 1952. The dystopian[1] story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. This widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class—the engineers and managers who keep society running—and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines.

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#8
Galapagos

Galápagos is the story of a small band of mismatched humans who get shipwrecked on the fictional island of Santa Rosalía in the Galápagos Islands after a global financial crisis has crippled the world's economy. Shortly thereafter, a disease renders all humans on earth infertile, with the exception of the people on Santa Rosalía, making them the last specimens of humankind. Over the next million years, their descendants, the only fertile humans left on the planet, eventually evolve into a species resembling seals: though possibly still able to walk upright (it is not explicitly mentioned, but it is stated that they occasionally catch land animals), they have a snout with teeth adapted for catching fish, a streamlined skull and flipper-like hands with rudimentary fingers.

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#9
The Sirens of Titan

The Sirens of Titan (1959) is a novel by Kurt Vonnegut. His second novel, it discusses issues of free will, omniscience, and the overall purpose of human history.

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#10
Mother Night

Mother Night is a novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut, first published in 1961. The title of the book is taken from Goethe's Faust. It is the story of Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American, who moved to Germany directly after World War I and then later became alternately a well-known German language playwright and a Nazi propagandist. The action of the novel is narrated (through the use of metafiction) by Campbell himself. The premise is that he is writing his memoirs while awaiting trial for war crimes in an Israeli prison. Howard W. Campbell also appears briefly in Vonnegut's later novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

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#11
Welcome to the Monkey House

Welcome to the Monkey House is an assortment of short stories written by Kurt Vonnegut, first published in August 1968. The stories range from war-time epics to futuristic thrillers, given with satire and Vonnegut's unique edge. The stories are often inter-twined and convey the same underlying messages on human nature and present society.

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#12
Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday is a 1981 collection of short stories, speeches, essays, letters, and other previously unpublished works by author Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

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#13
Happy Birthday, Wanda June

Big game hunter Harold Ryan returns home to America, after having been presumed dead for several years. He finds that his wife Penelope has developed relationships with men very much unlike himself, including a vacuum salesman and a doctor. "Wanda June" of the title is a young girl who died before she could celebrate her birthday. Her birthday cake was subsequently purchased by one of Penelope's lovers, for a celebration of Harold's birthday in his absence. Wanda June and several other deceased connections to Harold Ryan speak to the audience from Heaven, where everyone is happily playing shuffleboard.

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#14

Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! is a science fiction novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut. Written in 1976, it depicts Vonnegut's views of loneliness, both on an individual and social scale. The book was adapted into the 1982 film Slapstick of Another Kind.

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#15

Jailbird is a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, originally published in 1979. Its plot concerns a man recently released from a low security prison after having served time for a minor role in the Watergate scandal. The novel uses a standard memoir format, revealing Walter F. Starbuck's current situation, then going back to tell the story of his first two days after being released from prison.

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Kurk Vonnegut is one of my all time favorite authors. His wit is amazing. I think I'll read Welcome to the Monkey House next.

Posted 5 months ago

tbh ive only read 3

Posted 1 year ago
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