wakwak007

Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors. My favorite book has to be "Mother's Night" I've read most of his books except two. Thw play Wamoos...Timbuktu and his autobiography, "Palm Sunday." Can't say enough of how I've enjoyed his books and I even named one of my dogs after him.


Eric F-
I would start with "Welcome to the Monkey House," because its a series of short stories and it would give you a rather broad view of the type of writing he does. Than I would probably either start from the begginning "Player Piano," or do it by Zen. This means go to any bookstore and see what they carry. If one of the titles or backcover summary sounds good, pick it up. I didn't go witha system myself. Except my sister and I went to the beach and we each bought a book, when we finished the first book we traded and when I got back I just started to look for his books at second-hand stores and grabbed what I could ( My first was Mother's Night) Enjoy, he has some really good books!

renaldow

Breakfast of Champions, Player Piano and Cat's Cradle are my top 3 favorites, followed by Mother Night, Deadeye Dick and Slapstick.

gondorspit

"Cat's Cradle" was a great book, really interesting. I'm halfway through "Timequake" which is the fist KV book I've read in five years, and can't seem to get into it. His observations are clever and keep me reading but overall it is sort of pointless. (Which is probably the point)

ziggy

I always try to start with the beginning, that's seems like the natural order. So, start with either 'player piano' or 'Welcome to the Monkey house'


Welcome....was published later, but the stories - at least mostly - were written first - I think.

Player Piano, Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat's Cradle, God bless you Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-five, Breakfast of Champions....I think that's right.....after that I'm not sure of the order.

funkyryno

"Cat's Cradle"
"Slaughterhouse Five"
"Hocus Pocus"

These are my favorite.

Ginwen

I mostly prefer some of the older ones

Cat's Cradle
Slaughterhouse 5
Mother Night

I like a lot of the stories in Welcome to the Monkey House as well.

JesseCuster

Slapstick and Mother Night

Matt925

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is my favorite. Totally underrated! It's about time I re-read that, as a matter of fact...

derickpsych

What are the best Kurt Vonnegut books? I'm reading Breakfast of Champions right now and I love it, so could someone recommend others of Vonnegut's best.

Jocko6577

Breakfast of Champions is good, but my favorite would have to be Cat's Cradle.

jay77a

Loved Slaugterhouse, Breakfast, Galapagos, Mother's Night, Cat's Cradle.....damn, so many good books.

Drop

Cat's Cradle is my favorite
then, Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse 5, Galapagos, God Bless you Mr Rosewater...
I was kind of dissapointed with Hocus Pocus.

Next up is Slapstick.

Edit: finished Galapagos, in the end it delivered but i expected more.

Damage

Read Slapstick and you'll be "lonesome no more!"

wendersfan

My favorites:

• Breakfast of Champions
• Cat's Cradle
• Jailbird
• Deadeye Dick
• Slapstick

Ones I liked:

• Slaughterhouse-Five
• Mother Night
• Bluebeard
• God Bless You Mr. Rosewater
• Galapagos

Ones I didn't like/didn't finish:

• Player Piano
• The Sirens of Titan

If I haven't named them here, it means I haven't read them, or I did read them and they made little or no impression.

DeputyDave

I like them all but "Bluebeard" is my favorite.

Josh-da-man

Speaking of Vonnegut, I was amused by the following review of "Disturbing Behavior" that appeared in American Spectator. (A conservative magazine, like "National Review.")

http://www.jamesbowman.net/reviewDetail.asp?pubID=505

Made laugh in spite of myself. (Actually, it was the only witty part of the review.)

gp98

You tease me! I thought that Disturbing Behavior was a Vonnegut book I hadn't heard of (since he cites himself in most of his books anyway) only to find that it was something else by somebody else that I haven't heard of.

My favs are:

God Bless You Mr. Rosewater
Breakfast of Champions
Cat's Cradle

tasha99

I'm the opposite. I wouldn't want to classify him as onlya sci-fi writer, since he wrote lots of other stuff, but I think much of his work is clearly science fiction and to say it isn't, is to say that "genre" fiction can't be excellent. That's an attitude I'm around all the time at school, and it always seems to come from people who don't actually read any genre fiction. If they read something good, say Slaughterhouse Five, they think that doesn't count--somehow scifi has to be judged by the worst it has to offer instead of the best. I love literary fiction, really I do, but I hear all the time about how much better it is than science fiction and I don't agree with that. I think for every shallow, gadgety scifi story out there, there is a corresponding literary story that is full of crappy metaphors and overflowery language. Just because 90% of science fiction is crap, doesn't mean that isn't true of literary fiction too (heck, I think it was Ted Sturgeon, the model for Kilgore Trout who said 90% of everything is crap.) So . . . sorry for ranting but I'm an English major who loves scifi and I hear too much about how shlocky it is from people who couldn't name five scifi books if their lives depended on it.

tasha

(Oh, my favorites are Slaughterhouse Five and Welcome to the Monkey House.)

Tyler_Durden

I absolutely loved Cat's Cradle. Vonnegut doesn't give a whit about his leading characters or traditional storytelling and as such allows his novel to breathe with molasses-black humor throughout. His cynicism gives the book that "smiling doomsday prophet" feel that made me laugh nervously and grin devilishly. Also, the juxtapositioning of science and religion and the argument that both can - and probably will - be equally damning for mankind is at once interesting and strangely conforting.

I've also read Hocus Pocus and Palm Sunday, and enjoyed both. Next up: Slaughterhouse-Five or Mother Night.

gp98

I've decided to reread Cat's Cradle after all the talk about it and since it has been a number of years since I read it, most of it seems new to me.

Drop

Just finished Slapstick,, it's right up there with Cat's Cradle as my favorite. I flew right through this one, such an enjoyable and hilarious book.

benedict

In my teens I picked up two or three of his works including "Breakfast of Champions". I failed to see what all the fuss was about and have not been moved to try anything of his since then.

That being said, he does seem to be regarded as something of a giant so I put it down to my own poor taste!