What I Am Reading - Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions

Kurt Vonnegut

Read it in paper-back at 302 pages.

September's selection for OLT book club brought us Kurt Vonnegut's 'Breakfast of Champions.'  This is not the first Vonnegut I have ever read, but alas, only the second.

Breakfast of Champions is a simple story of Dwayne Hoover an owner of a Pontiac Dealer in Midland and Kilgore Trout, a Science Fiction Writer in New York who are on a path to meet and spill chaos into Midland, due to a combination of defective brain chemicals and shoddy writing that just so happen to reach event horizon in a terrible calamity.  It's a pretty simple tale and not complex in the telling.  There is no real surprises as Vonnegut explains most of what will proceed in the opening of the book.

While the whimsy and satire of Vonnegut is always appreciated, I think the loose purpose of the story really bears true here.  For me, the story, which weighs in at about 302 pages, simply lacks a lot of substance.  I might even go on to say that the story could have dropped some of the whimsy and satire, surely the pictures (though they are humorous), and the whole story could have been compressed into just around 100 pages, add poignant satire back in and probably could still scratch under 200 pages easily.  While I know Vonnegut fans are true believers, I simply don't see this as a prize in the Vonnegut shelves for the common reader.

With that said though I did enjoy it and still plan to continue down the road and through the forest with all of Vonnegut's work.

So, where does that leave OLT book club? (Potential Spoilers Below)

We had a great turnout with nine members completing, which sees us tied for both the Hunger Games (March) and Eaters of the Dead (May) for the most readers to complete a selection.  Sadly though, this is the first book OLT book club in which the selector of the book failed to read it.  For shame, and a pox upon his house.

Let's dig in.

Most of the characters were straight forward, leaving only their actions to enjoy or denounce, so because of this, Kilgore and Dwayne were the most 'liked' characters with call-outs for Francine, Wayne, and the big KV appearance near culmination.

Favorite moments included the breaks for Kilgore Trout's stories and Dwayne's slide to madness, including a colorful mention to crashing cars and plastic covered feet and even a few mentions for the unexpected insert near the end.  Least favorite moments generally where the opposite of other peoples favorites, which was interesting in itself.

Scoring was higher than our OLT average, barely and sees us at 5.66.  The breakdown (1 being the worst and 10 being the best):

Th3ee: 6

Dust: 6

Hylen: 6

G$$: 6

SS: 4

AndyCoug: 8

Dave: 3

Tom: 4

Eleach: 8