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Summary: One of the best novels of the twentieth century
Review: Regarded by many critics as the book that put Vonnegut on the map, it tells the tale of a man and the obserdity of religion. Vonnegut makes up his own religion (if L Ron Hubbard can do it) and his own vocabulary to illustrate that the world is the way it is because of the way we persive it and if you were to alter your perception maybe you might change the world. This book is a must for any Vonnegut fan and an easy, insightful, mesmurizing, thrill ride that will make you laugh and cry at its truth and at its absurdity.
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Summary: If you love it...
Review: This book is stupendous...it offers a ver readable and hilarious read, that fter you are done, you can return to and have deep philosophical discussions. Brilliant with its simplicity and sublime humor. If you want to see Vonnegut's amazing range, read this book and breakfast of champions (both hilarious but deep) and then Mother Night and Bluebeard (serious...two of the best books on the planet)
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Summary: A classic book that everybody should read
Review: My dad told me to read this book and I looked at him like he was crazy. I hadn't read a book any harder than Harry Potter and MAD magazine for the last few years, why would he expect me to read this mumble jumble. I agreed to give it a try and sat down and read the back. It sounded like a intersting book so I decided to read the first chapter or so. After about an hour of reading I realized that I could not put the book down. One thing about Cat's Cradle is that it is very well written but it doesn't have a high diffuculty of reading, so a boy like me could read and enjoy it. Cat's Cradle is a very fun and a feel good book, but it has suspence and drama that keeps tou on the edge of your seat. The book features a whole made up religion, started on a crazy made up island and crazy characters on the island and even a crazy substance that could end the world, all this coming from the mind of Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote the wonderful tale. I think that if there is 5 books that everybody should read in their lives, this should be one of them. Cat's Cradle is just so imaganitive it just makes you want to be inside the book. So if you haven't read this book, I suggest you jump out of your seat right now and go to the library and read Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. It is a great book.
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Summary: Big Vonnegut fan - my favorite
Review: I've read all Vonnegut's books. This was the first one I read, and it's still my fav. Breakfast of Champions comes close, but this book is still his masterpiece in my mind.Anyone who sees this world from the half glass empty principle will love this book. I laughed out loud repeatedly - Kurt just cuts through the crap and writes the most basic concepts of life at point blank range - he really knows how to make us see things for what they truly are. I'm not going to bore you with what I got from the book or what you're supposed to think. I think that what makes this book great is that you'll get something out of it no matter what your belief structures are or what your background is. Read this book and decide for yourselves.
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Summary: Topsy-Turvy world of human thinking err....halucination
Review: Using ridiculous concepts and items such as ice-nine, an island run by a peaceful demagogue, the invention of Bokonism but it's banning in the public sphere in order to reinforce it's name and aims into people's minds, and the numerous questionable career practices people engage in from Ruler's whore, to Ukrainiane's midget exploitation of trade secrets through a love affair, to heir of the ice-nine throne, Cat's cradle utilizes these somewhat phantasmagoric items and ties them in to a workable, though absurd environment with absurd and warped thinking about interpersonal relations and how status and symbols play into them. Sounds kinda like our world, eh??? In fact, it's very analogous to our world and just as a cat is easily amused and full of schizonphrenic ponderings over a cradles motive and purpose, we humans jump around at once significant and then insignificant images and movements through vast re-interpretations relative to the socio-historical context of the times. Once thinking that we've found our quenchable thirst for play and/or food by capuring that pattern of yarn strung together to form a cradle, it is morphed into a new dimension of complexity and mysteriousness. Instead of releasing that which is patently false and which can destroy us (i.e. ice-nine), we humans hold on to these farcical notions. Maybe the key is to create our own farcical analogies and conceptual vision of reality to makes sense of the underlying farcical framework upon which we are evolving. This is what Vonnegut has once again done expertly. "Life is all but a game", and as with anything it's not about the result but the journey traveled in playing that game and dealing with the competition, our own farcical, subconscious conceptions!
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Summary: A Christian's Cup of Tea (SARCASM)
Review: I enjoyed this book. It was funny, scandlous, and very interesting.
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Summary: Funny, entertaining book
Review: The story is about a man who starts out trying to write a book about what the scientists that created the atomic bomb were doing on the day the A-bomb as dropped on Hiroshima. That project leads him to a fantasy country in the Caribean sea. The story is very well done; it is quite witty, is full of humor, and is easy to read. The story reminded me a lot of the movie Dr. Strangelove. The book makes the nuke arms race seem so trivial and crazy, which it certainly seems to have turned out to be. It was the first book by Vonnegut I read and certainly will not be the last.
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Summary: A Very Entertaining Read...
Review: This was my first Vonnegut book, now I'm hooked. The book was like nothing I've ever read. The only book that is even remotely similar is Catch-22. I actually laughed out loud a couple of times. Read this book, you will enjoy it.
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Summary: best book ever
Review: plain out and simple best book ever. Kurt did a great job. this book needs 6 stars
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Summary: Constantly Hilarious, and Infinitely Provocative
Review: Wow.
P.S. In "Cat's Cradle," Kurt Vonnegut tells us everything we ever wanted to know, but were afraid to ask, about foma, ice-nine, and Bokononism. In the telling, he leaves us mesmerized with his sadly warm, warmly sad vision of mankind, and of mankind's pathetic proclivity for trying so hard to believe in known lies, and in unknown truths. The story is told by Jonah, who is researching the life and times of a great physicist, Dr. Hoenikker. Hoenikker is one of the more prominent fathers of the atomic bomb, yet he has an image of being a childlike, saintly figure who lived his life enraptured by the cerebral, celestial music of the spheres. He may or may not have been a saint, (this is never fully resolved,) but he definitely was directly responsible, in this book, for at least two devices which are foolproof, sure-fire, results-guaranteed means of totally annihilating all life on this planet. Doesn't sound much like a saint, you say?!?!? Well, all I can say is, you need to read this book. As the story unfolds, we meet Hoenikker's scared, lonely, grown children, whose fates are locked together by the terrible secret of ice-nine. Jonah travels with them to the little-known, Caribbean island republic of San Lorenzo for his research. Once there, he discovers the bizarrely sensible religion of Bokononism, and his life is changed forever. "Cat's Cradle" is crammed with a curiously concatenated cornucopia of consistently compelling creative conundrums. A word of warning: you may want to wear some kind of metal helmet while reading this book. Otherwise, you will risk scratching a hole in your skull from scratching your head all the time, trying to understand all the brilliant ideas in this book. There are just tons of insights into how we interpret reality, how we interpret fiction, and how we sometimes do the second of those activities, when we should be doing the first... One character is a professional book indexer. She goes through manuscripts of books for a living, and creates indexes for them. Sounds like kind of an odd profession, eh? Well then, how do YOU break down dreams, or reality, to make them easier to cope with? What's YOUR strategy for this basic human need? Or, for another example -- another character is one of Dr. Hoenikker's grown sons. He was called "Secret Agent X-9" as a child, because he happened to have a few fairly furtive mannerisms. As an adult, he basically lives a James Bond life, making or breaking kings, and consorting with beautiful women on a lush, island paradise. Did his dreamlike adult reality grow out of the real nightmare he lived out as a mocked child? Where did one start, and the other stop? This is the kind of question that Kurt Vonnegut raises in this book. Every sentence has meaning. Just amazing. An infinite number of thumbs up.
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