Popular Kurt Vonnegut Books
Ranked #2,671 in Books, Poetry & Writing, #106,272 overall
So It Goes.
Why should you read Kurt Vonnegut? Start by asking yourself these questions:
- Do you like to laugh?
- Do you enjoy satire/sarcasm/slapstick comedy?
- Are you open-minded?
- Do you like science fiction?
- Would you enjoy randomly placed, hand-drawn illustrations with obscure meanings?
IF YOU ANSWERED YES TO ONE OR MORE OF THE QUESTIONS ABOVE...
Congratulations! You would love Kurt Vonnegut and here's the books to start with.
Who Is Kurt Vonnegut?
Vonnegut attended Cornell University and while enrolled there he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Kurt Vonnegut's experience as a soldier and prisoner of war had a huge influence on his work.
Kurt Vonnegut, along with five other battalion scouts, wandered behind enemy lines for several days during the Rhineland Campaign. They were cut off from their battalion and captured by Wehrmacht troops on December 14, 1944. Vonnegut was Imprisoned in Dresden and was chosen as a leader of the POWs because he spoke some German. After insulting some German soldiers that were guarding him he was beaten and had his position as leader taken away. While a prisoner, he witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden in February 1945 which destroyed most of the city.
Vonnegut was repatriated by Red Army troops in May 1945 at the Saxony-Czechoslovakian border. Upon returning to America, he was awarded a Purple Heart for what he called a "ludicrously negligible wound," later writing in Timequake that he was given the decoration after suffering a case of "frostbite".
After the war, Vonnegut attended the University of Chicago and worked at the City News Bureau of Chicago. He left Chicago to work in Schenectady, New York for General Electric. The University of Chicago later accepted his novel Cat's Cradle as his thesis and awarded him the M.A. degree in 1971.
So it goes.
Kurt Vonnegut died on April 11, 2007, in Manhattan following a fall at his home several weeks earlier. Kurt Vonnegut will truly be missed, now and always.
Content gathered from: Wikipedia
Vonnegut smoked unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes, a habit he referred to as a "classy way to commit suicide".
Popular Kurt Vonnegut Novels
Cat's Cradle: A Novel
Amazon Price: $7.69 (as of 05/28/2012)
Cat's Cradle, one of Vonnegut's most entertaining novels, is filled with scientists and G-men and even ordinary folks caught up in the game. These assorted characters chase each other around in search of the world's most important and dangerous substance, a new form of ice that freezes at room temperature. At one time, this novel could probably be found on the bookshelf of every college kid in America; it's still a fabulous read and a great place to start if you're young enough to have missed the first Vonnegut craze.
The Sirens of Titan: A Novel
Amazon Price: $6.72 (as of 05/28/2012)
"Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer . . . a zany but moral mad scientist."-Time
"Reading Vonnegut is addictive!"-Commonweal
"His best book . . . He dares not only ask the ultimate question about the meaning of life, but to answer it."-Esquire
Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction
Amazon Price: $0.16 (as of 05/27/2012)
Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and funny portrait of life in post-World War II America-a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence.
Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel
Amazon Price: $5.57 (as of 05/28/2012)
Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.
Breakfast of Champions: A Novel
Amazon Price: $7.24 (as of 05/28/2012)
Breakfast of Champions is a slippery, lucid, bleakly humorous jaunt through (sick? inhumane?) America circa 1973, with Vonnegut acting as our Virgil-like companion. The book follows its main character, auto-dealing solid-citizen Dwayne Hoover, down into madness, a condition brought on by the work of the aforementioned Kilgore Trout. As Dwayne cracks, then crumbles, Breakfast of Champions coolly shows the effects his dementia has on the web of characters surrounding him. It's not much of a plot, but it's enough for Vonnegut to air unique opinions on America, sex, war, love, and all of his other pet topics--you know, the only ones that really count.
Player Piano: A Novel
Amazon Price: $7.94 (as of 05/28/2012)
Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a super computer and run completely by machines. His rebellion is a wildly funny, darkly satirical look at modern society.
Galapagos: A Novel (Delta Fiction)
Amazon Price: $6.15 (as of 05/27/2012)
YA Leon Trout, the ghost of a decapitated shipbuilder, narrates the humorous, ironic and sometimes carping decline of the human race, as seen through the eyes and minds of the survivors of a doomed cruise to the Galapagos Islands. Vonnegut's cast of unlikely Adams and Eves setting out in a Noah's ark includes Mary Hepburn, an American biology teacher and recent widow; Zenji Hiroguchi, a Japanese computer genius (who does not make it to the ship, although his language-translating and quotation-spouting computer does); his wife, Hisako, carrying radiated genes from the atomic bombs; James Wait, who has made a fortune marrying elderly women; and Captain Aolph von Kleist. Also included: six orphaned girls of the Kana-bono cannibal tribe, who will become the founding mothers of the fisherfolk after bacteria render all other women infertile.
Slapstick or Lonesome No More!: A Novel
Amazon Price: $7.67 (as of 05/28/2012)
In Slapstick, Vonnegut muses on war, man's hubris, and the awful, crippling loneliness humans are freighted with--but, miraculously, the book still manages to delight and amuse. Absurd, knowing, never depressing, Slapstick kindles hope--for the possibility of wisdom, perhaps; for human resiliency, surely.
Deadeye Dick: A Novel
Amazon Price: $7.23 (as of 05/27/2012)
Deadeye Dick is Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors-a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb-Rudy Waltz, a.k.a. Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.
Mother Night: A Novel
Amazon Price: $7.79 (as of 05/28/2012)
"A great artist."-Cincinnati Enquirer
"A shaking up in the kaleidoscope of laughter . . . Reading Vonnegut is addictive!"-Commonwealth
"Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer . . . a zany but moral mad scientist."-Time
“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand..
- Kurt Vonnegut”
My personal favorites!
#1: Breakfast of Champions
#2: Slaughterhouse-Five
#3: Cat's Cradle
#4: Player Piano
#5: Galapagos
A List of Kurt Vonnegut's Novels, Short Stories, Essays, ect.
R.I.P.
Kurt Vonnegut apparel, stickers & more!
Here are some great deals on Kurt Vonnegut books...
On November 11, 1999, the asteroid "25399 Vonnegut" was named in Vonnegut's honor.
More About Kurt Vonnegut
- Nonfiction Previews, November 2012, Pt. 3: From Kirstie Alley to Kurt Vonnegut
- Vonnegut, Kurt. Kurt Vonnegut: Letters. Delacorte. Nov. 2012. 464p. ISBN 9780385343756. $35. LITERATURE Vonnegut's life as told by his letters; a smart idea for a writer with such a distinctive voice. Edited by novelist/screenwriter Dan Wakefield, ...
- 'I Was There': On Kurt Vonnegut
- By Kurt Vonnegut. By Charles J. Shields. Well, if I've grown older and more respectable, then so has Kurt Vonnegut. Those old mass-market paperbacks you used to find him in, with their trippy covers and flaky pages, 50ยข used?
- How festival land turned green
- ?We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap,? wrote author Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five. Well, there are a raft of music festivals trying their level, eco-friendly best to not "cheapen" or wreck our planet, most notably the ...
- Weide plans Vonnegut doc
- Robert B. Weide, whose Woody Allen: A Documentary is in official selection) is looking to revive his long-gestating feature doc on sci-fi author Kurt Vonnegut. Robert B. Weide, whose Woody Allen: A Documentary is in official selection) is looking to ...
Thanks For Stopping By!
Is there a book I'm missing? Are any of these your favorite? Comment, comment, comment!
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miaponzo
Mar 26, 2012 @ 2:09 pm | delete
- I absolutely LOVE Kurt Vonnegut and everything he writes! Blessed!
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InkedEmma
Oct 16, 2009 @ 4:34 pm | in reply to susannaduffy | delete
- Ooh! That's a new one for me! Thank you! :) On my other lens, I list Kurt Vonnegut novels, short stories, ect. (There's a plexo for the short stories - I would love & appreciate it if you posted Harrison Bergeron to that plexo!)
http://www.squidoo.com/KurtVonnegutBooks
Thanks for your praise!
- Emily
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susannaduffy
Oct 16, 2009 @ 3:11 pm | delete
- Harrison Bergeron should be in here somewhere I reckon. Great little lens, you don't hear much about Vonnegut these days.( I remember when he was Kurt Vonnegut Jr)
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InkedEmma
Oct 14, 2009 @ 8:21 pm | in reply to mysticmama | delete
- Ooohh!! If only I got to see him speak, I'm sure that was just wonderful. :) Thanks for the welcome! I appreciate your comment.
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mysticmama
Oct 14, 2009 @ 8:08 pm | delete
- Nice job! Love Vonnegut... I saw him speak live in 1998 and got an autographed first edition of Bogambo Snuff Box... one of my favorite Authors!
Welcome to Squidoo!
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InkedEmma
Oct 4, 2009 @ 5:24 pm | delete
- Thank You! I'll definitely check that story out!
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MerlinX
Oct 4, 2009 @ 3:48 pm | delete
- Cool, I'm first to comment! Nice introduction to Vonnegut's work. I'm a fan of Cat's Cradle - never read Breakfast of Champions, but you really made me want to.
No, I don't think you missed any books, but I think the short story Harrison Bergeron (http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html) is worth a mention - one of my favorites.
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by InkedEmma
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