Cat's Cradle (1963)

Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut
(1963)

Slaughterhouse Five gets on all the High School reading lists, and it's certainly an important book full of insight into humanity's tendency towards tribalism, violence, cruelty, and self-deception. But I never wanted to read it a second time. I've probably read Cat's Cradle fifteen times, and it's always hilarious, cogent, and heartbreaking.

Vonnegut was a prolific writer who combined serious literature and science fiction with mass appeal. He spawned countless imitators, but none can match his cynical sadness as he cracks cosmic jokes to make life tolerable. Cat's Cradle is short, with short chapters — 127 chapters crammed into 300 pages, and each chapter is a brilliant nugget of economical prose in its own right. Put together, they add up to a brilliant, rambling tale of an unnamed protagonist and his growing entanglements with the bizarre children of one of the creators of the atomic bomb. The tenets and rituals of the Caribbean religion of Bokononism were my first exposure to a religion that I could really get behind (too bad it's fictional).


Read this book. Then read it again. Then give it to a friend.

The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

The Crying of Lot 49
by Thomas Pynchon
(1966)

The shortest of Pynchon's novels is also his most accessible — but that doesn't mean it's all that accessible. I probably read this for the first time when I was 13, and I think I only really understood everything after I read it for the seventh time, in my mid-20s. Pynchon's writing is obscure, difficult, profane, hilarious, and haunting. On the surface, a story about a woman (Oedipa Maas) being appointed executor of the will of a rich ex-boyfriend (Pierce Inverarity) sounds like it could be the start of an interesting mystery. And it is. But what she uncovers is so satisfying in its implications that you might find yourself getting a tattoo of a certain symbol in the book. Few tattoos would announce your lit-nerd cred as loudly as the muted post horn. As my friend Nathan gave the tattoo to my ex-girlfriend Liz when they were in high school, he said "not very many people will know what this means, but the people who do will fall in love with you for having it."

But be prepared for some passages that are difficult to parse. Take the book one paragraph at a time. Or one sentence at a time. As for help if you get stuck — read difficult passages out loud with a friend until you get it. It's worth the effort.