30 Day Challenge: Day 14

Day 14: Favorite Book of Your Favorite Author

"This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral, I just happen to know what it is…" ---Vonnegut

I talked about this prompt on Friday a little. (oops!) Mother Night is easily my favorite book by Kurt Vonnegut. I hold such a special place for this book because it opened me up to a whole new reading experience. This book also introduced me to metafiction -- another style often found in Vonnegut's books that I love. Metafiction is a style that poses questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. This is most notably done in Vonnegut's work through his satirical social commentary. I had read metafiction before, but Vonnegut's style made it stand out, and I wanted more!

I thoroughly enjoyed the narrator's voice in Mother Night, and how he writes his memoirs, as crazy as they often get in the book, while awaiting trial. Maybe it's the moral of the story though that really gets to me, and not just the good writing. "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."…but that's not the only moral in this delightful read. Perhaps an even better one is "Make love when you can. It's good for you."

-Desiree

“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”  -Palahniuk

I, too, made the mistake of talking about my favorite Palahniuk work on Friday! Sorry, dear readers, sometimes (read: often) my foresight is overpowered my desire to chat on and on and on about my favorite things. And if that favorite thing is a great book? Well, good luck getting me to stop. Luckily, I didn't drone on too much about Invisible Monsters. Today: I will.

Out of the hundreds of books I have read, only ten titles fit on to my top-ten books of all-time shelf. Invisible Monsters is one of those books. Palahniuk has the rare talent of consistently hitting you with over the head with a message and somehow avoiding the beating-a-dead-horse syndrome. To me, Invisible Monsters is all about one central theme: vulnerability. Personally, I find vulnerability utterly fascinating, primarily how it relates to the way we form relationships with others. Invisible Monsters, though incredibly satirical, is a meditation on humanity, on what it means to be beautiful. 

In meeting new people, I find three qualities to be the most important: Kindness, Humor, and Sincerity. Underlying each of these? Vulnerability. Invisible Monsters examines this concept in a way that is both comical and staggeringly honest. 

Before getting the text 'tell me a story' tattooed on my arm, I debated this quote instead: "Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.” 

I think that's quite the testament to what an impact this book has had.