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Jul 06, 2008

RatsRGods rated it:

On April 11, 2007 ,at around 6am, I awoke to NPR news announcing that Kurt Vonnegut had passed away.
Normally I would just go back to sleep, but I popped out of bed and went to my computer to confirm that it was really true (because you know how NPR gives false information all the time and shit).
Then my next thought was to go to Half Priced books and buy every Kurt Vonnegut book there.
So I set my alarm for 9am so I could make sure I was there when they opened the doors becaus More...

2 comments like (24 people liked it)

Dec 18, 2011

Kristen rated it:

"Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?"

26 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 13, 2009

Chrissy rated it:

The last book written by Vonnegut (I believe) and composed of short essays about various things (politics, life, human nature, death) this was a quick, delightful and sometimes depressing read. But then isn't everything Vonnegut writes some strange mix of delightful and depressing? It seems that as he has aged, Vonnegut has become less optimistic about the human species. I can't really blame him. Yet, even as he lambastes Bush, bombs, war, pollution, and the generally inconsiderate among us, he More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

May 27, 2011

Jeanette rated it:

Another good reads reviewer said that Kurt Vonnegut's death was such a great loss because "nobody thinks the way he did." So true, and such an understatement. There's just no other mind that works anything like his. Of course, every mind is unique, but most of us are depressingly ordinary, myself included. Sigh...

This book is an odd compilation of the meandering thoughts, observations and reminiscences of Vonnegut at the age of 82. There are some 2 star WTF moments where yo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 03, 2008

Mel rated it:

The cover quotes the Los Angeles Times as saying, “[This] may be as close as
Vonnegut comes to a memoir.” But it’s not really a memoir. Sure, it reflects upon the
past, nationally more than personally. And that’s what drives the linked essays; they’re
not personal. That’s what makes them personal.

Vonnegut shares with the reader his disillusionment: “Many years ago I was so innocent
I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 04, 2008

Meliana rated it:

reading this book is like sitting with an old friend on a couch on one lazy afternoon. you and your friend were into a pleasant and intimate talk. it just felt so good! you talked a lot; from nowhere to somewhere, from someone to no one. that's it!

then you parted. you kept that feeling of a very good chat with an old friend of you till days afterwards.

two weeks later.. after days of workload and rythm of life, you start to tell yourself:
hey, i had a nice chat with More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Aug 24, 2007

Kiera rated it:

A Man Without A Country was my first Vonnegut book since early high school (and the author's death). I should have started by revisiting a classic, because I really wanted to feel a sense of homecoming--a reunion after so many years apart. The problem with these essays is that, for the most part, you get the moral without stories. Unfortunately, Vonnegut's terrific storytelling chops aren't really on display in this book; instead you get disjointed thoughts (some of which are expressed b More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 19, 2011

Doug rated it:

This is honestly not such a great Vonnegut book, but as I read it it became his last.

Writing-wise, it's memoirs, and rambling ones at that. However, even bad Vonnegut is touching. I gave this book to a muslim co-worker of mine after a discussion in which he insisted to me that I was a religious man, whether i believed it or not.

The coworker was really moved. He'd never heard of Kurt Vonnegut before, and in fact had never really been exposed to the half of America who d More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 20, 2008

Julia rated it:

This is the most human of Vonnegut's works--written when he was 82, shortly before he died. It's a thin volume that can be read in one sitting--and it gives new insight into this humanist writer who loved his country and the world so much that he spent most of his life FURIOUS at how stupid people could be. Each short essay begins with a quotation from Vonnegut, and the plot diagrams in chap. 3 on "creative writing" are hilarious. But this thin volume is full of anger as well as humor- More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2008

Sergio rated it:

Some of the ideas of Kurt dont jive with me and others resonate very deeply. It is this mixture that I find coupled with the ease in which I find reading his work that draws me in every time. I burned through this book in a single evening, but I am sure I will be thinking about it for months to come.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Mar 24, 2009

Andrea rated it:

It took me a LONG time to be ready to read this book after my favorite author died. It would be the last Vonnegut to read, how could I say goodbye?! But finally, as my little children slept peacefully last week, I took it up. I was not disappointed--not that I expected to be--and I command you all to read it too! Now!

I am in love with Kurt Vonnegut, and I will always regret that I never got to tell him that, may he rest in peace. And may the streets of heaven be lined in unfil More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Dec 31, 2008

Marc rated it:

I'm hard-pressed to think of a writer so utterly convinced of humankind's innate self-destructiveness and unshakeable will towards ugliness, yet who is so generous and fun to read. On the surface, this is an introduction to his general worldview (we are doomed, or at the very least, doomed to struggle through the chaos imposed on us by the inanities of whatever chimps happen to be in power), as seen through the lens of post-9/11 events (and especially post-'04-election despair). But also, it's V More...

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Jan 21, 2012

MJ rated it:

Something of a misnomer, this title: “A Memoir of Life in George W. Bush’s America.” Hmm. No. In fact, Kurt’s final book is another collage of pieces taken from public speeches, and various articles commissioned for the publication In These Times. Michael Silverblatt described this book as a “response to a plea”—that plea coming from the editors of Seven Stories Press, who tickled Vonnegut into writing little chunks again. Any fresh writing from an eighty-three-year-old man is hard to come by, a More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 12, 2012

Mark rated it:

Tragedy + time = comedy... usually. But in Vonnegut's case, it's more like tragedy + time + another tragedy = despair, disgust, and a pinch of comedy. Written in 2004, just a year into our Iraqi Freedom adventures and about a year after the mission was declared accomplished, A Man Without a Country is series of essays outlining Vonnegut's take on life, art, politics, and the condition of the American soul.

Never one to take himself too seriously (he is the author of this quote: We a More...

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Nov 07, 2011

Ross rated it:

I'm on a bit of a Vonnegut kick right now. Knocking off the few I haven't read and rereading others. Quick read. More depressing than insightful. There were two chapters I enjoyed very much: one on K.V.'s luddite status and another on the "guessers" of society who tend to get power.
"Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by re More...

2 comments like

Jan 20, 2011

Molly added it

Have you ever watched a standup comedy skit and laughed so hard because you actually got all of the references? Well if you have paid attention in your American history classes, then Kurt Vonnegut's, A Man Without a Country will trigger the same emotions. Vonnegut's story takes you though American history up until 2005, and it includes all of his extremely opinionated commentary. I personally would recommend this book to individuals who have read and enjoyed another one of Vonnegut's book pri More...

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Sep 28, 2010

Neil rated it:

I believe in full transparency here at NC.Com and that why I think it is important that you know that Kurt Vonnegut could transcribe a conversation between Matt LeBlanc & Kato Kaelin about the show Laguna Beach and I probably still call it great. It’s Vonnegut. No disrespect to Toni Morrison, but he is the best American writer still generating product. Philip Roth can suck it. Now I admit it, I didn’t get his God Bless You Dr Kevorkian, because Viacom wanted hardback pricing for a book that ende More...

1 comment like

Jul 27, 2010

Rowland rated it:

Evidently, sometimes when you have been writing your entire life it must be difficult to stop, even when all that is left in you are the minor rants and raves of an average disillusioned aging liberal. Granted, it is always heartening to hear opposition to the mindless, violent, earth-abusing leadership now in control of this country and this beautiful planet. But Vonnegut offers us nothing more than name calling. His disillusionment, reflected in the title of this short and inconsequential boo More...

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Apr 29, 2010

Diane rated it:

I read this 'memoir' in less than three hours during a Saturday night. One can hardly call it an autobiography because the tidbits of information we get from Kurt's writing is, as usual, not very insightful towards the person's life but more towards the thoughts and humorist outlook Kurt has on the world around him. He writes these words at the age of 82, two years before he would meet his end from irreversible brain injury when he fell in his NYC home. His brain finally played a joke on him, an More...

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Apr 07, 2010

Dan rated it:

I had taken a long sabbatical from Vonnegut lately, after discovering and falling in love with him last summer. My reasons for this break were: 1: I knew I would soon run out of Vonnegut if I kept up at my pace, and 2: I found too much cynicism appearing in my own writing at the time I was speeding through his early works. Vonnegut has a way of being honest about his deep cynicism about today’s society, without forgetting his fundamental humanism, and does it all in a way that brings a smile More...

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Oct 16, 2009

pati rated it:

Picked this up from work after reading KV's quote on book burning and the importance of librarians (refer to my profile for the full quote). Had myself many chuckles, like in response to: "The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon." and other satirical comments.

However, the most impacting story was "I have been called a Luddite". The issue of technology (such as computer More...

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May 29, 2009

Quinn rated it:

This is the last book Vonnegut published in his lifetime and without question the most biting and cynical. Some have suggested its his most autobiographical but Palm Sunday, Fates Worse Than Death, and the intro to Slapstick are just as much so if not more so. Nearly all of his books are very reflective of himself although sometimes more veiled than at other times. A Man Without a Country almost seems more like a collection of some of his more quotable anecdotes and quotations with some new, ver More...

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Oct 09, 2011

Patty rated it:

They try to call this little treasure, given to us by Vonnegut during his final years on this earth, the closest thing to a memoir. Vonnegut is a novelist who responds to life itself and tries to make us laugh. This book is a collection of short essays where he tells a bit about himself and our world and rather then just ranting, he tries to make us laugh. He is the Mark Twain of our time.

Politics will always give a writer plenty of fodder. "I am going to sue the Brown & Will More...

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May 15, 2011

Julie rated it:

I feel like I'm committing blaspheme by not revering Kurt Vonnegut and giving more stars. Admittedly this is the first, and only, book I have read of his. "A Man Without a Country", a collection of memoirs and essays, was written in 2004. He died in 2007. On one hand, I feel like I should pay attention to such a famous icon in his last days, learning and gleaning from him. On the other hand, he didn't live an ordinary life by any means. It reminds me a bit of Oprah Winfrey offering More...

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May 11, 2011

Jim rated it:

Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without A Country, published in 2005, is a short entertaining memoir full of wit and candor. Unfortunately, it also contains a good deal of commentary on his politics, which simply reveals him as another partisan hack in support of all things progressive. He also seems to hate all those who disagree. (In 2005, that was pretty much the base-line attitude of the left. Every and all evil was tracked to George Bush.) Perhaps he enjoyed sounding like a disagreeable 82-year-old m More...

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Nov 13, 2010

Ted rated it:

I've always enjoyed Vonnegut's imagination and sense of humor in his novels, but I never knew how much we thought alike politically or philosophically until I read this little gem.

It's not an autobiography by any means and I'm not sure you'd call it a memoir. The blurb from the New York Times reviewer on the back cover says that it is "like sitting down on the couch for a long chat with an old friend." That's probably better than I could explain it.

It's not a big po More...

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May 03, 2009

Punk rated it:

Essays. Vonnegut complains about the state of the world and kids these days. He sounds like a grumpy old man, but at the center of his anger is disappointment and it's heartbreaking because his books were always about hope in the face of disaster, about the belief that people could change. And here he's lost all that. He says humor is to used to deflect pain and fear, but these essays are nearly humorless. It's like the Bush administration made him give up. I know a lot of us felt that way, but More...

1 comment like

May 07, 2011

Heather rated it:

Perhaps I expected more; perhaps I was disheartened by the dislike of the semi-colon, which I say in jest, but I was hopeful this book would prove deeper than the light meditations it unearthed. It read like a long essay sold as a revelatory book. There were passages I enjoyed and it was a quick read, an easy read, greatly improved upon by the interesting prints throughout, but it seemed a narrative whose steam was diluted by the minimalism of saying just enough to be charming and far too litt More...

2 comments like

Dec 04, 2011

Brent rated it:

I really enjoyed this cranky old man's rants and raves about Middle American greatness (rave) and George W. Bush (rant) among other things. I agreed with a lot about what he had to say, especially when it came to neoconservatives. I think he and I both despise them equally.

Vonnegut's writing is clear, simple, and fun to read, but he totally loses me with his love of all things progressive. If there's no virtue in compelling American soldiers to fight in the Middle East, there's no vi More...

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Aug 13, 2011

mona rated it:

"We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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