Kurt Vonnegut is not my fave author.

[nwhiker]

I read _Slaughterhouse Five_ when I was in high school. I hated it. HATED. I despised it with a passion reserved prior to that only for _Catcher in the Rye_, a few of Molière's plays (I loathed _The Precieuses Ridicules_ and _Les Fourberies de Scapin_), and most of Balzac.

But for some damn odd reason, I decided to read _Cat's Cradle_.

Yeah, no.

Yes, I knew that it was satire, all parody, meant to make people see something about society they otherwise would have missed.

But nope, nope, nope.

I don't like my lessons wrapped in the absurd, I guess, though I very much enjoyed _Ella Minnow Pea_.

Just ugh. I got through _Cat's Cradle_ but I hated every minute of it.

Considering how revered the book and author are, it's clearly a case of "It's not Kurt, it's me".

And I hereby declare (note to self: refer back to this!) that I will not attempt to re-read _Slaughterhouse Five_ or _Cat's Cradle_ , I will not attempt to read any other of this books or short story collections. The problem is clearly with me, and I'm not going to put myself through that again.

Note: One of the funny things about me and Vonnegut. I was given copies of _Slaughterhouse Five_ and _Catch 22_ by family friend, an American diplomat who was leaving his posting (a few other books as well). Books in English were a rarity at at time so I set down to read both of them. Hated Vonnegut, never managed more than 50 pages of Heller. However, it all muddles in my brain and for some reason I have to constantly remind myself that Vonnegut didn't write _Catch 22_.

And before anyone thinks I'm slagging on US authors. While _The Plague_ is one of my top-10 books, I despised _L'Etranger_. I'm not a fan of Ionesco either. And since in the last year of high school, in the French system, one takes philosophy, and while I found most of that class fascinating, I didn't like Kierkegaard either, as the prof inextricably beat the connection between him and much of the literature I did not like. So, eh.