A review by mochitoazuki
Novels & Stories 1963–1973: Cat's Cradle / God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater / Slaughterhouse-Five / Breakfast of Champions / Stories by Sidney Offit, Kurt Vonnegut

5.0

My library didn't have individual Kurt Vonnegut novels so I initially decided to put off reading his work. I happened to search again but I was genuinely interested in reading his work and I found this mega compilation of some of his most famous works. I figured that reading this book would be killing several birds with one stone. I read through Cat's Cradle, I thought it was okay. I read later on that Cat's Cradle may not have been the best book for a Vonnegut newbie to start off with. I liked it enough to continue reading to at least the next book. I read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and fell in love with it. I loved the nobility of a rich man, shedding the pretentious layers that come with money and power to help the poor in Rosewater county. Now slowly growing accustomed to Vonnegut's writing style, I was eager to read Slaughterhouse-Five because of all of the reviews, but found myself underwhelmed. Maybe it's one of the things when something gets so much hype you expect the world out of it and then you ended up expecting perhaps too much. I shrugged at the end and kept it moving to Breakfast of Champions. Within the first few pages I knew I was going to love this book and my intuition did not disappoint me. It ended up becoming my favorite Vonnegut novel, and made me eager to want to read even more of his works. One thing I will add was that I LOVED the re-occurring characters that appeared throughout the five stories. It felt like an extension of something bigger than the novel itself. It allows a real world experience, characters that appear in several novels lets the reader believe these characters are actual people, living lives outside of the confinements of the story Kurt Vonnegut introduced them in. The book ends with some enjoyable short stories and what I found was the best part of the entire book. It was Kurt's autobiographical account of his experience in World War II and the negative emotions he battled with afterwards. Here is a man who has seen the worst of mankind and still wishes and believes in the best of them. That is beauty and purity at its finest. I wish I got to have the Vonnegut experience while he was still alive, but I appreciate him and his work nonetheless. God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut.