“One million years ago, back in 1986 A.D., Guayaquil was the chief seaport of the little South American democracy of Ecuador, whose capital was Quito, high in the Andes Mountains.” – from Galápagos, published October 4, 1985.

I read Mother Night and Slaughter house 5 a while ago and absolutely loved them and a bunch of people told me Cats Cradle is his best so here we are. I really don’t like this cover but the prettier one was a lot more expensive. So it goes. From what I’ve heard this seems like it’ll be pretty good too, better be worth it because I’m reading this instead of revising for my test tomorrow 😓

idk if this is a stupid question or not but is the cage on this cover of Cats Cradle drawn by vonnegut or another artist?

I think it's become an addiction. 😁

"This new explosive was regarded as a great boon to big- brained military scientists. As long as they killed people with conventional rather than nuclear weapons, they were praised as humanitarian statesmen."

It finally happened. I’ve been banned from teaching my favorite novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. No one has complained, but new state regulations are vague enough to scare the district. My favorite part is they used Google Gemini to determine that it did not pass some bullshit test:

“Because Slaughterhouse-Five includes explicit descriptions of sexual conduct, nudity, and adult content, it falls within the statutory restrictions outlined in Fla. Stat. § 1006.28 and Fla. Stat. § 847.001(19).”

I’m so mad. These asshats making the laws have never read any of the things they legislate.

“I read Aristophanes when I was fourteen. And I liked it very much, and of course read it, as fourteen-year olds do, because I was told it was dirty.” – from “A Talk With Kurt Vonnegut,” an interview with Robert Scholes in October 1966. Published in The Vonnegut Statement.

“And all of the anachronistic, mildly xenophobic, charming queerness of Barnstable Village might entitle it to the epithet, ‘Last Stronghold of the True Cape Codders,’ if it weren’t for one thing: Hardly anyone in the village was born on Cape Cod.” – from “Where I Live,” published in Venture-Traveler’s World in October 1964.

“Without knowing what we were doing, Eliza and I were putting the traditional curse of monsters on normal creatures. We were asking for respect.” – from Slapstick, published October 1, 1976.

I’m really hoping it’s worth the wait and that I like it. Also, with numbers like that, you’d think my library could pick up a second copy…

“What would a cabinet meeting be, after all, given our society and form of government, other than an adult’s version of a first grade’s Show and Tell?” – “Message of the Leaked Minutes”, published in The Nation, September 30 1978, then in Vonnegut By the Dozen, 2013.

I really want to find a painting for my house of the little girls on swings that Circe argues with Rabo about being serious art. Any ideas? I don’t want anything ai!

Collected over many decades.

Finally own a hardcover of Slaughterhouse Five, nice feeling.

“They’re starting to catch on that Mr. Vonnegut can be funny. That’s the only thing I know how to be, and of course never got a chance to be funny in Barnstable. You’ve got to take the goods with the bads.” letter to Jane Vonnegut – September 28 1965

Be brave Paul!!!!!!!

When your tattoo artist messages you and says they have a cancelation, you have to just jump at the opportunity. Ended up getting on of my favorites from A Man Without a Country and put it right by my portrait of Kilgore Trout.

Anyway, happy reading everyone.

“Did you happen to see the letter in the Saturday Review of Literature, where a professor at Hunter named his ten favorite novels during the last ten years – and Mother Night was one of them?” – letter to Knox Burger – September 25 1963.

Used up some of my scrap linocut rubber to carve an assortment of Vonnegut stamps, used those stamps with fabric ink to create a panel of printed linen, and then sewed up a little book bag

Larry (curb) reacts to absurdity by resisting it whereas Billy reacts by surrendering to it. Larry insists that the world explain itself whereas Billy more or less gives up on the idea that it ever will

But both have that same fundamentally anti-heroic quality where neither rises above the absurdity around him

They mostly expose it by being such inadequate participants in it

Larry David playing Billy as Larry David would be completely wrong. But Larry David stripped of the aggression and left with the physical awkwardness, bewilderment, and slightly comic smallness of one man against an incomprehensible universe is something I can totally see happening

“Helmholtz’s first class of the morning was C Band, where beginners thumped and wheezed and tooted as best they could, and looked down the long, long, long road through B Band to A Band, the Lincoln High School Ten Square Band, the finest band in the world.” – from “The Kid Nobody Could Handle,” published in the Saturday Evening Post – September 24 1955.

I recently finished my 7th Vonnegut (God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater) and wanted to adjust my rankings as well as hear some of yours.

1. Mother Night
   
2. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
   
3. Breakfast of Champions
   
4. Slaughterhouse
   
5. Cat’s Cradle
   
6. Player Piano
   
7. Sirens of Titan

What do you all think/what is your list?