Bluebeard (Vonnegut novel) Puns

hey! big vonnegut fan here. i've read a decent amount of his works (slaughterhouse, cat's cradle, rosewater, breakfast of champions, mother night, sirens) and loved them all, but i'm currently looking for novels of his most similar to rosewater and sirens- just something more uplifting and life-affirming. all suggestions appreciated !!

There’s a passage from a Kurt Vonnegut novel where a man shows another man a photograph of a woman in a bikini and asks, “Like that Harry? That girl there.” The man’s response is, “That’s not a girl. That’s a piece of paper.”

Source

I’m looking for movies that “feel” the same as Kurt Vonnegut novels… if that makes any sense?

I love the underlying philosophical meaning of Kurt Vonnegut and the way his themes/writing make me think about life in new ways. I love the cerebral nature of his work and the way he uses philosophy to express his unique perspective of real life problems.

It’s also fair to say that Charlie Kaufman’s films are some of my favorite. I love “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” and also “Synecdoche, New York.”

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for movies with a philosophical undertone that will give me a new perspective and keep me thinking about them for days

I was raised on UK fiction as well (particularly Shakespeare), but American authors were emphasized. I'm now wondering if the authors I mentioned are considered significant in English-speaking Europe.

Just interested in weird fiction

The novel Slaughterhouse Five could be read either way. There is a lot of straightforward narration that seems to imply that the time travel and aliens are real within the story, and some parts that cast doubt, and imply it's all in Billy's head.

Did Vonnegut, himself, outside the novel, ever openly and unambiguously clear this up, and state one way or the other?

Listen.

In the tenth grade I read Slaughterhouse Five for English class. I fell in love and moved on to Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions. This was all shortly after Mr. Vonnegut passed away. So it goes.

I never pursued reading any more of Vonnegut's work, and somehow lost possession of my copies of those novels (probably enthusiastically lent to people who either didn't read or didn't appreciate them), while passively acquiring three others (Jailbird, Bluebeard, and Slapstick) which I never got around to reading. However, I always felt that Vonnegut's writing spoke on some personal frequency that I could never verbalize, and I intended to read more.

Now I have the summer off and decided that I'll use the time for, among other things, reading all 14 of Vonnegut's novels. I ordered them all from Amazon, and briefly angsted over the fact that they will not be delivered in a way that would allow me to read them in the order in which they were published.

Then I remembered about Billy Pilgrim, and decided it will be okay to come unstuck in time for the summer.

poo tee weet

Hi readers,

I have a really hard time getting into books. Right now I watch TV all night and it bugs me...I NEED a good book. Ive read the ones above and would love some suggestions, along with these considerations:

• I know about Animal Farm
• I know about Handmaids Tale, but Im watching it on Hulu and for some reason that turns me off from wanting to read it?
• I love Kurt Vonnegut but I dont generally love Sci Fi. What I love about his books is more his writing style, dark humor, etc. I have read most of his books.
• I really dont read much and that list pretty much sums up what Ive read. Anyone else in that boat that managed to break into a good genre? Ill take those suggestions too!

THANKS! 8D

Clearing out the shelves once again, most of this stuff will go to Goodwill if no one here wants it. Most of these are paperback with a few exceptions which I've noted with bold.

[Send]

Poetry

• Selected Poems, Gwendolyn Brooks

• The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

• Sleeping with the Dictionary, Harryette Mullen

• City Eclogue, Ed Robertson

• The Descent of Alette, Alice Notley

• The Collected Poems, George Oppen

• American Poets in the 21st Century, edited by Claudia Rankine and Lisa Sewell

• Every Shut Eye Ain’t Asleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans since 1945

• The Fact of a Doorframe, Adrienne Rich

Nonfiction

• Before European Hegemony, Janet L. Abu-Lughod

• Reading for the Plot, Peter Brooks

• The Companion Species Manifesto, Donna Haraway

• We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour

• Kerouac: A Biography, Ann Charters

• The Beat Vision, Arthur and Kit Knight

Fiction

• Maud Martha, Gwendolyn Brooks

• A Holiday for Murder, Agatha Christie

• The Women of Algiers in Their Apartments, Assia Djebar

• Ways of White Folks, Langston Hughes

• An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, P.D. James

• The Complete Stories, Franz Kafka

• Amerika, Franza Kafka

• Arrival and Departure, Arthur Koestler

• Scum of the Earth, Arthur Koestler

• Deadlock, Sara Paretsky

• The Travels, Marco Polo

• Season of Migration to the North, Tayeb Salih

• Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein

• The Jungle, Upton Sinclair

• Bluebeard, Kurt Vonnegut

• Jailbird, Kurt Vonnegut

• Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton

Sci Fiction

• Life, Gwyneth Jones

• Galileo’s Dream, Kim Stanley Robinson

• Blood Music, Greg Bear

• Learning Processes with a Deadly Outcome, Alexander Kluge

Plays

• Platus and Terrence: Five Comedies, Translated by Deena Berg and Douglas Parker

• Rome and the Mysterious Orient: Three Plays by Platus, Translated by Amy Richlin

• Life of Galileo, Bertolt Brecht

[Want]

• The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov

• The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury

• A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories, Ray Bradbury

• R is for Rocket, Ray Bradbury

• The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles

• Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk

• Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

• Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut

• Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut

• Welcome to the Monkey House, Kurt Vonnegut

• Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

• Graphic novels, comics (no manga please)

• offers: I like sci fi, fantasy, c

I've only read about halfway through, but I'm really enjoying it.

Long story short, the human race becomes entirely extinct except for about ten people who survived a cruise ship crashing on the galapagos islands. The story alludes to how humans evolve into a new shape over the next million years and goes into detail about how human intelligence is not the evolutionary bonus we think it is.

I don't think this book would be good for people who just want to read about new animals or plants but it's very well-written, quite interesting, and there's a lot of talk about genetics, ancestry, and genealogy.

I personally think Cat's Cradle would translate particularly well to a limited series format.

At many points this year I've thought "Damn its like the world has become a weird sci-fi story." I wonder what the perfect Vonnegut ending would be.

I read several books by a specific author and can't remember his name or the names of the books. I think one of them may have had a magical/fantasy bent, but I'll stick to details I remember:

• Main character was, in at least one of the books, a physicist

• Heavy emphasis on alternate universes, pocket dimensions, and quantum physics

• British author(99% sure of that, or most of the books were written with British spelling)

• One main character's wife divorced him and he started working in a slaughterhouse, carting wheelbarrows full of guts to a trash chute

• Covers were white with sketchy and simplistic illustrations in black

• Read them in a library around 2012-2014

• Writing style was similar to Vonnegut's, with black humor and (maybe) unflowery prose

• In one of the books, the MC realizes the solution to a math problem isn't available using base 10, but some other base number system

Thanks in advance!

Trying to get back heavily into reading anything, and I've enjoyed works from Kurt Vonnegut and Franz Kafka more than a lot of other stuff I have read in terms of fiction. I'm looking for similar stuff, of absurdist elements in fiction that deal with greater societal issues or factors, such as alienation or mental health, as an example. Genre really isn't an issue for me so long as it's what I'm sorta looking for. Thanks for any recommendations, I greatly appreciate them

I read slaughterhouse 5 and I loved it, didn't really understand what "Listen:" is supposed to mean. I've started Cat's Cradle a minute ago and saw it again on the first page. I guess its a Vonnegut thing but does it have any particular meaning?

Hey! Huge Vonnegut fan here. Just finished my sophomore year of college and I'm celebrating being 50% of the way to graduation by buying a few more of his novels (gotta pass the time in quarantine somehow lol.) The most recent one I finished- my fav by far- was Sirens of Titan, and god. I've never loved a book more. I've been trying to start God Bless You Mr. Rosewater recently, but have had a little bit of trouble getting into it (still plan on reading it tho.)

The ones I've read in order of preference are:

1. Sirens of Titan
2. Slaughterhouse Five
3. Breakfast of Champions
4. Mother Night
5. Cat's Cradle

Any advice to which novel I should read next? Is there any benefit to reading them in order?

https://preview.redd.it/defk9laard551.png?width=508&format=png&auto=webp&s=2235d54a55976014cc0c5560a32548ac7eec474b

I loved every novel of his that I've read until I got to Breakfast of Champions. At first I tried to force myself to get through it because I was sure that I just had to keep reading, but even after finishing it I dont love it. Do you have a least favorite?

those are pixels bro, they aren’t real…