Rating: 
Summary: Funny, Funny, Funny stuff!
Review: Kurt Vonnegut is a master. This book was by far my favorite, and I've read most of Vonnegut's. It is full of laughes and Vonnegut's most famous character Kinglore Trout! I don't see how you could not enjoy this book!
Rating:
Summary: Wide Open Beavers
Review: This is a great introduction to the wackier side of the world of Kurt. Slaughterhouse... and Mother Night could be better works overall, but this is, by far, much funnier and much more relevant to today's society. Great commentary. It never gets boring and, most importantly, never gets nauseously sarcastic- it is always fresh. You will definitely enjoy this, no matter who you are. Bruce Willis, Nick Nolte, and Albert Finney are doing the film- we'll see about that.
Rating: 
Summary: Trix are for kids
Review: Reading the average review of Breakfast of Champions, one gets the impression that this book must be at once uproariously funny, incisive in its social critism, and deeply philosophical. In truth, none of the above are even remotely applicable.Like Mark Twain, whom Vonnegut has often been likened to, Vonnegut's humor is largely based on tongue-in-cheek irreverence of the "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" variety. The idea is to write a social critique from the perspective of a naive or unbiased outsider who is supposedly able to see things more clearly than everybody else. The outsider goes around pretending 'unwittingly' to expose absurdities, prejudices, and hypocrisy underlying various social conventions. The outsider in Breakfast of Champions is a narrator who writes about Earthlings as if he were an intergalactic traveller. The irreverent statements he makes are supposed to shock hypocrites, while those who are in-the-know titter away at the spectacle. Concerning power politics, for instance, Vonnegut writes: "[America] disciplined other countries by threatening to shoot big rockets at them or to drop things on them from airplanes." About racism he declares: "A Nigger was a human being who was black." Are you tittering? The 'philosophical' content of Breakfast of Champions, like the social commentary, is shallow and presented with a singular lack of eloquence; unlike the social commentary, it is incoherent rather than simplistic. The narrator is mainly concerned with the principle of determinism and how it relates to mental health, and the main characters in the novel serve as personifications of different aspects of this dilemma. Dwayne Hoover, a car dealer from the midwest, goes crazy after reading a novel by Kilgore Trout, a pessimistic science fiction writer. The novel is in the form of a letter from the Creator to the only person on the planet with free will. Hoover, already losing his marbles at the time of reading the story, takes it literally, and ends up injuring some of the other characters whom, in his orgy of solipsism, he has dismissed as "machines". The 'clever' reader is supposed to notice that the relationship between the Creator and the man with free will in Trout's novel is, on one level, an allegory of the relationship between a writer and the characters he creates. This is alluded to with increasing frequency until Vonnegut himself jumps into the novel to wreak havoc with the allegorical 'levels'. After being 'enlightened' via a speech by one of his characters about "awareness", Vonnegut tells the rest of the story about the Trout/Hoover encounter which personifies the author's personal triumph over madness. Vonnegut's intent seems to have been to show that though "awareness" is not a sufficient premise for free will, it nevertheless distances us from the spectre of determinism by implying that we are more than simply biological machinery. The concept is not tremendously profound, and that is probably why Vonnegut goes to such lengths to obfuscate the issue with ambiguous and/or conflicting statements throughout the novel. Of course he might be just writing carelessly. I have heard it proposed that the apparent incoherence of the novel is intentional in order to forestall any global interpretation of the book. People who support this view gleefully maintain that the point IS that there is NO point. This type of person will generally follow these remarks with something about how literature is written to evoke, not to explain; how the person searching for a 'purpose' in literature shows a fundamental lack of comprehension of what literature is.... And so on. Breakfast of Champions is tasteless "trash" (I am quoting Vonnegut's own appraisal of the book on p.6 - for once his bluntness is entirely apt), fortified with heaps of smug pretentiousness. If you can stomach this sort of junk, have it your way; for a real literary meal, look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Deserves six stars!
Review: Probably the funniest book I've ever read. Vonnegut always has something worthwhile to say, but this is probably his best work ever! A must-read for everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Random thoughts in a semi-organized way
Review: Wooohoooo! that rocked..I finished it today and it was amazing. I specifically thought his views on race relations made me look at the world in a different way..I'm not sure i understood the book in its fullest, but i have yet to carry a conversation about it to another person who read it.. so I might change what i wrote hear soon.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, true vonnegut form
Review: I am an avid reader of kurt vonnegut's work and this book is one of my favorites. a great read!
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Summary: the movie's coming out - so look for a repeat bestseller
Review: Written on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, Vonnegut chose this auspicious occasion to revisit the life of one of his characters who appeared in earlier novels--Kilgore Trout, an obscure science fiction writer, whom Vonnegut now allows to become rich and famous, despite Trout's total lack of interest in fame and fortune. (Bruce Willis got the part!) Vonnegut's beautiful phrases are few and far between. His ironic truths are delivered in short, straightforward sentences--a sometimes gentle, sometimes not so gentle confrontation. Vonnegut is in a class by himself. Unlike other satirists, he shows a genuine affection for his characters, reflecting what must be a great love for the human race--despite its foibles that he so expertly identifies. His black comedy is rendered with a sensitivity that elecits tender feelings and fondness for his characters, who are neither heroes nor villains, but people like ourselves who have stubbed their toes walking life's path. His c! omic irreverence always serves to let us know ourselves better, and he leaves no sacred cow unmilked. About the discovery of America in 1492, he says, "Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them." BOC is among Vonnegut's finest writings, something of a summary of his first fifty years of experience as a human being.
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Summary: Loved the pictures!
Review: First of all, I wasn't an English major so I can't talk to you about grand themes and insights. What I would suggest to anyone who hasn't seen this book yet is to just pick it up some where and look at a few of the pictures and read a snippet or two of the book. I can almost guarantee you'll buy it. The humor was great as were the observations. I just finished ""Breakfast of Champions" and have made it my mission to read the rest of his stuff by the end of summer. I've also found this book helps fend off muggers. After you read it you'll start thinking about it at odd times and places and just break out laughing, which is what I often do at the bus and train stations in Chicago. It's great how people veer away from you when you do that. LOOK AT THE PICTURES!
Rating:
Summary: Funny, enlightening, entertaining.
Review: My first Vonnecut novel, it is the best of all those I've read. The book intertwines the lives of a car salesman and a failing author. Vonnecut attempts to write the book from the point of view of someone who knew absolutely nothing about the way Earth works, and the end results are fascinating.
Rating:
Summary: it was really, really swell...
Review: Don't waste time reading some pretentious, pompous, and all together boring review of BOC--just read it.
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