u/hauntedsolace

So I really, really love almost everything Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote, including lesser-liked books like Slapstick and Timequake. I think this is partly because what I like about them isn't quite the same as what other people like- his humour is fun and all, but I really need a level of cynicism and/or sincerity simular to Vonnegut's to temper it. I get tired fast if I'm just reading another comedic scifi/fantasy romp.

I already have quite a lot of things I can read if I want a laugh, what I feel l get out of Vonnegut books is a kind of bitter balm for the soul I can't really seem to get elsewhere. Cat's Cradle for example has one of the most depressing endings a book can have, but rereading it often feels like kind of a warm hug to me. For simular reasons a lot of my favourites parts of his books are when he's writing about the war in one way or another- not just in Slaughterhouse-five but the way it comes up in God Bless You, Mr Rosewater, in Hocus Pocus and Galapagos, in the Mars portion of The Sirens of Titan, etc.

Looking at which short stories are my favourite from Vonnegut' short story collections, I think it's safe to say I prefer fiction with at least a few scifi or speculative elements over fiction without.

I share a lot of Vonnegut's fascination with free will, luck, determinism and things thereabouts- I often name my favourite Vonnegut book as The Sirens of Titan for this reason, and the "catch-up" after the titular event in Timequake feels a lot like how my life (one of very limited opportunity and many obligations that I often wish I could "snap out of") often feels.

I think frequently of this one quote about Vonnegut I'm going to paraphrase terribly which said he was just a little bit too compassionate to write pure nihilism, just a little too cynical for his fellow humanists, and I feel like that sums up the sorts of books I'm looking for well.