Never approaches the mainland

books:


	• Galapagos (Delta Fiction) Kurt Vonnegut Dial Press Trade Paperback, 1999 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 114 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

"middle of the menu" Vonnegut

Well, I'm a big fan of Vonnegut's, especially his earlier stuff, but by the time this one came out I was no longer devouring his new works immediately upon publication. I recently took a wonderful trip to the Galapagos Islands, though, and a friend told me this book was a must-read.

The main theme of Galapagos is that humans evolving a big brain did not turn out to be such a good evolutionary strategy. Clever (and dark) enough, but only marginally sufficient to sustain a full-length book.

Oh, it reads very easily, and it's undeniably Vonnegut, so I didn't have a bad time reading it, certainly. But, Sirens of Titan it ain't.

This is for the confirmed Vonnegut fan who's probably going to wind up reading pretty much all of his stuff eventually anyway. For most everybody else, there's probably a dozen better choices to read first.

for more information click here

interesting book

The extraordinary book Galapagos

Hi my name is Jon Laino and I am a senior at butler tech high school. I have just read the book Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut for a reading assignment. The way Kurt starts this book is "one million years ago in 1986" so the book takes place in the future but it is about the 1980's. I know confusing right, that's what I thought to. This book is good and has a good concept.

This book is about a man named James Wait who was born an insest baby and sent to a foster home, as he got older he looked to get accepted into different groups of people and learned the "bad" way of doing things, but I wont get to far into that. So where the book starts off really is James waiting at the Hotel El Dorado in Ecuador. He ended up there because he was running from his 7th ex wife. He is what I like to call a scammer he marries women and gets there money and leaves, by now he is a millionaire just from that. So he is at the hotel waiting for the nature cruse around the world and is supposed to end up at the Galapagos Islands.

In order to find out the rest of this crazy and invetures book you arte going to have to read it so I don't have to give it away. To sum myself up I thought this book was really good and inventive but it was also a little confusing for me and a little hard to follow. But if you are into sci-fi type of stuff or fiction I would deffinatly

for more information click here

Never approaches the mainland

(Spoilers herein)

If the aim of a writer is to forge a unique tone, a unique stance from which to view the human condition, then Vonnegut is a success. The problem is that his ideas often transcend his abilities as a novelist. "Galapagos'" back flap is one of the best I've ever read, but when I finished the actual book I felt as though I was skid over the rich foundation of ideas he wanted to build on. Yes, he's witty. Yes, he has some acute points to make about human hypocrisy. Yes, he's had some of the most original ideas of his generation. In fact, Vonnegut's one of the few who's been able to successfully create a hybrid genre between Sci-Fi and fiction/lit. But lost in his witticisms, innovations (as a writer and a thinker), far-reaching analogues, and hollow dialogue, is the perspective of the ultimate goal of the book: we never take the journey we've been so excited to take. We only anticipate it, and then realize at the end it's passed us by.

for more information click here

A Life As A Fish

"The situation is acute. If we could entirely eliminate our cortex, it would perhaps, not be so serious. We could, perhaps, live as complex a life as a fish and have a nervous system perfectly adjusted to such a life."

This speculation from page 295 of Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski describes Vonnegut's theme rather well.

Vonnegut once again pulls humor out of bleakness.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

hot

not?

What's your opinion?

Write a review and share your thoughts!

recommendations

Kurt Vonnegut Novels, Chronological
Books to boggle the mind
Vonnegut Novels Ranked
Books that Cast Light
Bow Before Vonnegut

search for books
delta, fiction, galapagos

Impressum / about us