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100th out of 1,969 books
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Galápagos
Galápagos takes the reader back one million years, to A.D. 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galápagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, and totally different human race. In this inimitable novel, America’s master satirist looks at our world...more
Paperback, 324 pages
Published
August 11th 2009
by Dial Press Trade Paperback
(first published 1985)
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Kurt Vonnegut explains that the greatest achievement of The Origin of Species is that it has done "more to stabilize people’s volatile opinions of how to identify success or failure than any other tome." The thinking is that so long as we continue to survive challenges, we will have improved over those that came before.
We often associate survival with success, merit and quality, and Vonnegut goes out of his way to undermine this notion in one of his less appreciated novels,...more
We often associate survival with success, merit and quality, and Vonnegut goes out of his way to undermine this notion in one of his less appreciated novels,...more
It will be interesting to see what becomes of the legacy of Kurt Vonnegut now that he is dead. Many great authors don't receive the recognition they deserve until after they have taken the giant step to the other side, but Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five was being taught in high schools across
America while the author was still alive so I guess it can be said that he was a legend in his own time. Maybe his appeal will diminish with age, but I kind of doubt it. I consider him one of the mos...more
America while the author was still alive so I guess it can be said that he was a legend in his own time. Maybe his appeal will diminish with age, but I kind of doubt it. I consider him one of the mos...more
I've read a few of Vonnegut's novels now, and I can't get enough. I love his writing style, his dark humor, and his incredible imagination. He has this way of making his bizarre visions of the future seem perfectly plausible, and makes me worry for our future and laugh at the same time.
Galapagos is told from the point of view of a person a million years after 1986. He relates the story of events in 1986 that led to the remnants of all of humanity being situated on one tiny island ...more
Galapagos is told from the point of view of a person a million years after 1986. He relates the story of events in 1986 that led to the remnants of all of humanity being situated on one tiny island ...more
I've read a whole lot of Vonnegut. I can summate my general feeling toward his works as follows: it's an incredibly engaging and interesting read that you simply fly through, but over the course of a few days after finishing it the plot is all but totally forgotten, and the protagonist appears increasingly underdeveloped the more you think about it. So not expecting a Raskolnikov or Mersault from Vonnegut leads me to take his books at face value.
Galapogos, however, was different....more
Galapogos, however, was different....more
Have you ever wondered about the role of mankind one million years from now? Most of this remarkable story takes place in 1986, yet is narrated by the ghost of a shipbuilder one million years later. He tells the story of evolution at its finest. Using the Adam and Eve template, Vonnegut shares one of his ideas on what can happen to Earth before and after a devastating WWIII. The story is humorous, scary and severely ironic all at the same time. Only Mr. Vonnegut could put this idea into such a w...more
En Galápagos el mundo ha colapsado tras una crisis mundial donde la teoría darwiniana en los ojos de Vonnegut nos conducen a una historia hilarante y reflexiva.
Las propuestas del autor son excelentes, como cuando uno de sus personajes va a morir, le añade a su nombre un *, dejando en vilo al lector sobre cuándo y cómo ocurrirá esa muerte.
kurt carga su pluma sobre la estupidez humana, incapaz de resolver sus absurdos y el fin de la sociedad como la conocemos. La conducció...more
Las propuestas del autor son excelentes, como cuando uno de sus personajes va a morir, le añade a su nombre un *, dejando en vilo al lector sobre cuándo y cómo ocurrirá esa muerte.
kurt carga su pluma sobre la estupidez humana, incapaz de resolver sus absurdos y el fin de la sociedad como la conocemos. La conducció...more
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Now, really... am I the only person who doesn't love Vonnegut?
naive youthful enthusiasm + Vonnegut's humanistic pessimism = anarchic and entertaining fuck-yeah!ishness.
Self-consciously jaded mid-twenties ennui + Vonnegut's humanistic pessimism = cliche city, like Fucking Tom Robbins re-writing Cat's Cradle.
Sorry guys, it's just my baggage bringing us down here.
Anyways, slaughterhouse 5 is great, and I liked God Bless You Mr Rosewater a lot too. Read those first.
The two stars are partly just a reactionary move to pull the rati...more
Self-consciously jaded mid-twenties ennui + Vonnegut's humanistic pessimism = cliche city, like Fucking Tom Robbins re-writing Cat's Cradle.
Sorry guys, it's just my baggage bringing us down here.
Anyways, slaughterhouse 5 is great, and I liked God Bless You Mr Rosewater a lot too. Read those first.
The two stars are partly just a reactionary move to pull the rati...more
Oh how I love this book. Parts of it do come off as a bit dated now, but the overall theme about all that we, the human race, and our oversized brains are doing to make ourselves extinct is still very resonant.
This is a tale of "The Nature Cruise of the Century" to Darwin's Galapagos islands in 1986 and how the small group of people beached on one of the islands ends up becoming the future all of humankind.
The detached narrator looks back on the pivotal moments...more
This is a tale of "The Nature Cruise of the Century" to Darwin's Galapagos islands in 1986 and how the small group of people beached on one of the islands ends up becoming the future all of humankind.
The detached narrator looks back on the pivotal moments...more
For many people, this is a lesser of the Vonnegut books. The giants 'Slaughterhouse Five' and 'Cat's Cradle' eclipse it. Perhaps because those are required reading, they charm me less. They go in the same category as The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye -- brilliant as they go, but ubiquitous.
This is more of a forgotten gem, and so I cherish it more. It's very Vonnegut in that it's unabashedly cynical, yet somehow hopeful. I love the bizarre meaning in his frank storytelling, and...more
This is more of a forgotten gem, and so I cherish it more. It's very Vonnegut in that it's unabashedly cynical, yet somehow hopeful. I love the bizarre meaning in his frank storytelling, and...more
Not quite as good as Slaughterhouse Five, but written with the same great imaginative verve, from the perspective of a ghost remembering the events of one milion years ago -- the 1980s -- when a financial crisis and a global epidemic combine to wipe out the world's human population, except for a small group of unlikely survivors who are stranded on Santa Rosalia and subsequently evolve into fish-like creatures with much smaller (and less troublesome) brains and speak only Kanka-bono, a language ...more
As with most Vonnegut I've read, there's a mysterious disease that precludes me from remembering anything I've read. His literature is so disjointed and insane that there is no magnetism between its content and my brain. Nevetheless, I really liked this book -- possibly even more than Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle.
It's in an interesting tense: told as a story set in the present day, but from the viewpoint of a million years from now. Basically, a bunch of minor and seemingly un...more
It's in an interesting tense: told as a story set in the present day, but from the viewpoint of a million years from now. Basically, a bunch of minor and seemingly un...more
I've read most all of the Vonnegut's at this point, and this is undoubtedly one of the best. An ironic look at evolution based on a twist to the Gilligan's island premise. Basically, a group travelers stranded on the islands are forced to breed to repopulate after some (i forget, honestly) travesty has befallen humanity.
The concept follows a familiar Vonnegut theme - that humans are too clever and emotional to be humane - hence evolution moves these island dwellers away from inte...more
The concept follows a familiar Vonnegut theme - that humans are too clever and emotional to be humane - hence evolution moves these island dwellers away from inte...more
"Galapagos" is, as far as I can tell, when Kurt Vonnegut decided to become "Kurt Vonnegut." This book feels like an imperfect parody of Vonnegut's style. It's not _bad_, per se, it's just not very good. Narrated from 1 million years in the future, by Kilgore Trout's son, this book has flashes of real resonance, like when Leon Trout speaks of his time in Vietnam. All in all, however, the entire thing feels misanthropic in a way that definitely would have appealed to me back in...more
Vonnegut takes on evolution and global apocalypse with his typical black humor.
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This is unlikely to replace "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" as my favorite Vonnegut any time soon, but it was distinctly satisfying. Everyone really loved "Slaughterhouse Five," and I love it too (it's beautiful and poetic and I can't even criticize the overabundance of "everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" tattoos because it's a damn good tattoo), but nothing will ever tickle me quite the way Eliot Rosewater did.
Leon Trout tried, though, he really di...more
Leon Trout tried, though, he really di...more
Considering how much I love Kurt Vonnegut, and how much I was psyched about the idea of the book, I simply couldn't get past the narration style. There is a certain desire, when reading a book, for some of the most important things to happen in something resembling the correct order, and to not know the results of the events as much as 250 pages before the details of the event. There is a certain joy in the shock value of story twists that the narration of this book completely stripped away. The...more
In spite of his premise that the big brains of humans are a maladaptation, an evolutionary fluke that threatens rather than aids survival and reproduction, and that within a million years from 1986 all humanity has become a small family of island dwelling tropical seal-like fishermen, Vonnegut's great humanity and persistence in celebrating the goodness in those who display it is present here, on a few occasions achingly so. All of the themes Vonnegut has dealt with - war, both those who make t...more
The basic supposition of this novel, told by a ghost a million years in the future, is that our brains are too big. Without our too-big brains we wouldn't be egomaniacs or serial killers, we wouldn't launch wars as a way of directing anger away from our own governments to others, we wouldn't con others, we wouldn't suffer as we do. The novel documents the decline and destruction of civilization due in part to our too-big brains and also to a random, unfortunate occurrence which wipes out most of...more
I was in the mood for Vonnegut's humorous writing style, and I was pleased to find I owned a Vonnegut book I had not yet read. It's safe to say that Galapagos is not my favorite Vonnegut novel, but it's still good. Slightly disappointing in one sense, because there is no suspense. Vonnegut makes it clear from the beginning how it will end, and like a sea turtle crawling slowly across the sand on his way back to the ocean, Vonnegut (somewhat) slowly plods his way towards his inevitable destinatio...more
The book takes place a million years from know and is being told somewhat as a bedtime story--about our time today. A group of border line insane people are preparing to go on "The Nature Cruise of the Century" to the Galapagos Islands. Before they get there, Earth is basically destroyed and they become a modern day Noah's Ark.
It started off really slow--almost to the point I gave up. After about half way through the book it takes off. It's just as hilarious as all other Vonn...more
It started off really slow--almost to the point I gave up. After about half way through the book it takes off. It's just as hilarious as all other Vonn...more
In Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos, he tells a thrilling tale of how man-kind evolves. The story takes place on an island called Santa Rosalia, and eventually ends up on the island of Galapagos. The characters begin on a cruise in Santa Rosalia, that is going to explore the islands of the Galapagos archipelago. The boat that they are on is called the Bahia De Darwin, in honor of the evolution scientist Charles Darwin. The passengers of the cruise are going to experience what is known as ‘the Nature Cr...more
It seems I am working my way towards eventually reading everything by Vonnegut. This is a lot easier than my more explicit literary goal, reading everything by Shakespeare, though it's a toss-up as to which is more rewarding. At times I think it's Shakespeare by a mile, but on the other hand Shakespeare wrote a lot of dreck and Vonnegut at his best is excellent.
Galapagos is not Vonnegut at his best but it is pretty good. It's not as depressing as some of his other stuff, and if it's...more
Galapagos is not Vonnegut at his best but it is pretty good. It's not as depressing as some of his other stuff, and if it's...more
My Big Brain . . .: You know what my big brain told me to do? It told me to read all the Vonnegut I could get my hands on, and my big brain finally got something right. More social commentary from the master of fiction with a message, Galapagos tells the story of the last band of humans and how they evolve, absent technology.
What's the cause of all human misery? An oversized brain, which brings up the book's tagline - My Big Brain Told Me To . . .
What would humans be like without this oversi...more
What's the cause of all human misery? An oversized brain, which brings up the book's tagline - My Big Brain Told Me To . . .
What would humans be like without this oversi...more
Writers, read this for: A great example of point of view and how the choice of a viewpoint character shapes a novel. To tell a story of evolution, Vonnegut narrates with a (mostly) omniscient ghost, able to see into the key characters' thoughts and motives. The ghost reflects on how he watched a handful of survivors of the human race become stranded on an island in the Galapagos and then observed the evolution of their ancestors over a million years. While much of the action focuses on the shipw...more
They say a statue is made when a sculptor sees a statue in the air and then just fills the form with substance, and a writer sees the story itn the blank sheet of paper and then just fills it with ink.
If 'Galapagos' was a sculpture, then it was made when Vonegut shaped it very roughly, then instead of polishing it began to slap handfulls of clay until the original shape was all but gone. The end result isn't pretty.
For a start, you'll know the entire plot within the first 20 pages....more
If 'Galapagos' was a sculpture, then it was made when Vonegut shaped it very roughly, then instead of polishing it began to slap handfulls of clay until the original shape was all but gone. The end result isn't pretty.
For a start, you'll know the entire plot within the first 20 pages....more
Странна книга. Отначало беше скучновата, но след първата 1/3 става все по-интересна и по-"дълбока".
Историята включва сравнения на сегашния свят и сегашните хора с еволюирали в продължение на милион години на един от Галапагоските острови хора, превърнали се в мега тъпи тюленоподобни същества. Основната застъпена идея, доколкото схващам, е, че проблемът на сегашното човечество са твърде големите, сложни, объркани и лъжливи мозъци на хората, които ги карат да искат и да прав...more
Историята включва сравнения на сегашния свят и сегашните хора с еволюирали в продължение на милион години на един от Галапагоските острови хора, превърнали се в мега тъпи тюленоподобни същества. Основната застъпена идея, доколкото схващам, е, че проблемът на сегашното човечество са твърде големите, сложни, объркани и лъжливи мозъци на хората, които ги карат да искат и да прав...more
Wikipedia insists that Vonnegut is a humanist, but I've only ever detected contempt for humanity in his books. I found this book to be characteristic in that it describes a materialistic world view, which includes no room for sympathetic characters (almost as if people aren't worth bothering about) and seeks solace in a celebration of the absurdity of trying to apply meaning to meaningless material processes (thanks, but no thanks). Like all of his books, the narrative techniques are far too cle...more
I kept going back and forth between rating this book two or three stars. I finally went with two stars because it was a doggie snuff novel and I have no patience for those. (OK, so it was only ONE dog, but still, completely unneccessary.)
This was my first Vonnegut book (I finally read him because so many friends recommended him) and one thing I have to hand him is that he is a truly gifted writer. I read through this book in about a day and a half, it has such a great flow to it and ...more
This was my first Vonnegut book (I finally read him because so many friends recommended him) and one thing I have to hand him is that he is a truly gifted writer. I read through this book in about a day and a half, it has such a great flow to it and ...more
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| the meaning of the end-spoiler alert | 1 | 47 | Apr 30, 2009 09:15pm |
Kurt Vonnegut, Junior was an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist. He was recognized as New York State Author for 2001-2003.
He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked a...more
More about Kurt Vonnegut...
He was born in Indianapolis, later the setting for many of his novels. He attended Cornell University from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. Vonnegut trained as a chemist and worked a...more
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“Some automatic device clicked in her big brain, and her knees felt weak, and there was a chilly feeling in her stomach. She was in love with this man.
They don't make memories like that anymore”
—
9 people liked it
They don't make memories like that anymore”
“For some people, getting pregnant is as easy as catching cold." And there certainly was an analogy there: Colds and babies were both caused by germs which loved nothing so much as a mucous membrane.”
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