<story><title>How To Write With Style (1999)</title><url>http://www.novelr.com/2008/08/16/vonnegut-how-to-write-with-style</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>adyavanapalli</author><text>As someone who hasn&amp;#x27;t read any Vonnegut, what would you recommend I read first?</text></item><item><author>mr_overalls</author><text>I had the good fortune to hear him speak at my university in the late 1990s. Fantastic. Notably, he talked just like he wrote - good-natured, quirky, avuncular, a little bit cynical.&lt;p&gt;For what it&amp;#x27;s worth, when you read Vonnegut, you&amp;#x27;re getting the real Vonnegut. He put his heart into his writings, leaving all of us (and future generations) the richer for it.</text></item><item><author>alextheparrot</author><text>I absolutely adore Vonnegut.  Reading his works taught me more about writing than any English teacher and formed my world view more than any other author.  I wish I could have met him before he passed, but it is hard not to feel like you&amp;#x27;re conversing directly with him through his books.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ashark</author><text>The Big Two are &lt;i&gt;Cat&amp;#x27;s Cradle&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;Slaughterhouse Five&lt;/i&gt;. They&amp;#x27;re the two you&amp;#x27;re mostly likely to end up talking with someone about, or to have familiarity assumed by an article or something. If we were to make it a Big Three the third one would be &lt;i&gt;Breakfast of Champions&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;His worst are probably &lt;i&gt;Slapstick&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;Timequake&lt;/i&gt;, and the latter&amp;#x27;s so full of references to his earlier works that you wouldn&amp;#x27;t want to make it an early read regardless.&lt;p&gt;The short fiction&amp;#x2F;non-fic collections published during his lifetime are generally great. Big exception for &lt;i&gt;A Man Without a Country&lt;/i&gt; which was pretty mediocre overall. Anything posthumous is suspect and should be deferred until you&amp;#x27;ve worked through the earlier stuff, if not avoided entirely. Not that there&amp;#x27;s nothing good in there, it&amp;#x27;s just that the average quality is way lower.&lt;p&gt;Personal favorites of mine that don&amp;#x27;t generally make best-of lists are &lt;i&gt;Deadeye Dick&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;Bluebeard&lt;/i&gt;. If you&amp;#x27;re reading him for the sci-fi connection rather than as general fiction, you want the Big Two plus &lt;i&gt;Sirens of Titan&lt;/i&gt; (which would probably be #4 in a &amp;quot;big four&amp;quot; as far as importance-to-have-read) mainly.</text></comment>
<story><title>How To Write With Style (1999)</title><url>http://www.novelr.com/2008/08/16/vonnegut-how-to-write-with-style</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>adyavanapalli</author><text>As someone who hasn&amp;#x27;t read any Vonnegut, what would you recommend I read first?</text></item><item><author>mr_overalls</author><text>I had the good fortune to hear him speak at my university in the late 1990s. Fantastic. Notably, he talked just like he wrote - good-natured, quirky, avuncular, a little bit cynical.&lt;p&gt;For what it&amp;#x27;s worth, when you read Vonnegut, you&amp;#x27;re getting the real Vonnegut. He put his heart into his writings, leaving all of us (and future generations) the richer for it.</text></item><item><author>alextheparrot</author><text>I absolutely adore Vonnegut.  Reading his works taught me more about writing than any English teacher and formed my world view more than any other author.  I wish I could have met him before he passed, but it is hard not to feel like you&amp;#x27;re conversing directly with him through his books.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ranko</author><text>Slaughterhouse-five - probably his most well-known work, and at least partly based on his own experiences in Dresden in World War II.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a very Vonnegut book, and a great gateway to the rest of his writing.</text></comment>