As I've mentioned on here previously, I recently moved. Now that I've painted every room in the house, I've been s-l-o-w-l-y unpacking things, and today I started on my non-essential books (aka, the ones I don't need on a day-to-day basis for classes). One of the boxes I dragged in from the garage just happened to have all my Vonnegut books; except for my old yearbooks, they're all that's sitting on one bookcase in my room right now. I'm a relative latecomer to his novels; we never read Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five in school, and I somehow missed out on him during college as well. Then my brother handed me "Galapagos" for its nerd-evolution (and, well, misanthropy) themes that he thought I'd enjoy. Of course, he was right, and I was hooked. Alas, though Vonnegut spent time teaching here in Iowa at the writers' workshop, I missed his stay by a good 40 years. And now (via Evil Monkey) Kurt Vonnegut has died--a sad day for fans everywhere. So it goes.
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Kurt Vonnegut was awesome! I was always a fan and actually had the good fortune of reading Galapagos in college during a fascinating class: Evolution in Biology and Literature. You may enjoy both my tribute I wrote for him this morning and a very recent post I wrote about evolution in response to a rather popular article that is very much Vonnegut-related.
http://npawellness.blogspot.com/2007/04/god-bless-you-mr-vonnegut.html
http://npawellness.blogspot.com/2007/03/galapagos-islands-and-huntingto…
So you classify your Vonnegut books as non-essential? Shame.
Mustafa,
Give Tara a break.
She is a busy biology professor who had to move during the middle of the semester and even stated her criteria for unpacking books, "aka, the ones I don't need on a day-to-day basis for classes". As good and important as Vonnegut's books are I do not think they are very appropriate or relevant to what she is teaching.
So you classify your Vonnegut books as non-essential? Shame.
Heh. Yeah, my brother would probably kick my ass for that comment too. :) But I've read all the ones I have except for "Timequake," which I was just thinking while unpacking them that I really need to get to that one soon. Maybe one of these days when I have a free weekend...
(Oh, and I do reference Ice-Nine sometimes when I'm lecturing on prions, so his books aren't completely irrelevant to my work...)
I was very saddened by this news - I did read Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse 5 in HS and just re-read the former this past summer. He was an amazing thinker and commentator; the comparisons to Twain were appropriate...but yeah, so it goes. Based on his public comments in 2005, he was "ready".
No cat, no cradle.