The Sirens of Titan was my first entrance into Vonnegut's crazy mind and it remains one of my all time favorite books. Never before (and I think never since then) have I actually laughed out loud while reading a book. And I'm talking an honest laugh, not a fake laugh to try to get people around me to ask me what I'm reading (although I've been guilty of that before). :)
I was at a used book store the other day and I got to talking with the owners about Vonnegut, since one of them happened to be a fan, and they found (on Wikipedia so it wasn't too hard to find) a list of his own books Kurt Vonnegut graded. The list is actually found at the end of his novel Palm Sunday and I thought it was interesting enough to repeat here:
Player Piano: B
The Sirens of Titan: A
Mother Night: A
Cat's Cradle: A+
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A
Slaughterhouse-Five: A+
Welcome to the Monkey House: B-
Happy Birthday, Wanda June: D
Breakfast of Chapions: C
Slapstick: D
Jailbird: A
Palm Sunday: C
I've only read books he considers to be A's or A+'s so I have yet to find out what he considers to be a "bad" book. Palm Sunday was published in 1981, so this list doesn't include a lot of the newer novels, of which there are quite a few.
