Recommendations based on Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fictionby Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans

  1. Cat's Cradle

    by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
    A satirical exploration of human folly, exposing the dangers of unchecked science and technology.

    Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ... Dr Felix Hoenikker, ... (Goodreads)

  2. Mother Night

    by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
    A tale of moral ambiguity, exploring the consequences of deception and the power of words.

    “Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer . . . a zany but moral mad scientist.”—,Time,, Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American ... (Barnes & Noble)

  3. Galápagos

    by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
    A journey to the Galápagos Islands revealing secrets of evolution, humanity, and the future.

    Galápagos is the story of a small band of mismatched humans who are shipwrecked on the fictional island of Santa Rosalia in the Galápagos Islands after a global financial crisis cripples the world's ... (Wikipedia)

  4. Stone Mattress: Nine Tales

    by Margaret Atwood
    Nine stories exploring human relationships and the complexities of modern life.

    A collection of highly imaginative short pieces that speak to our times with deadly accuracy. A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late ... (Goodreads)

  5. Wise Blood

    by Flannery O'Connor
    A darkly comic Southern Gothic tale of faith and sin, and a man's struggle to find redemption.

    Recently discharged from service in World War II and surviving on a government pension for unspecified battle wounds, Hazel Motes returns to his family home in Tennessee to find it abandoned. Leaving ... (Wikipedia)

  6. Selected Poems

    by E.E. Cummings
    A compilation of lyrical poetry that explores the beauty and complexity of life.

    E.E. Cummings is without question one of the major poets of this century, and this volume, first published in 1959, is indispensable for every lover of modern lyrical verse. It contains one hundred ... (Barnes & Noble)

  7. Life, the Universe and Everything

    by Douglas Adams
    An intergalactic quest to find the answer to the ultimate question of life.

    After being stranded on pre-historic Earth after the events in, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, , Arthur Dent is met by his old friend Ford Prefect , who drags him into a space-time eddy , ... (Wikipedia)

  8. Any Human Heart

    by William Boyd
    A man's life journey, chronicling his loves, losses, and adventures.

    Logan Gonzago Mountstuart, writer, was born in 1906, and died of a heart attack on October 5, 1991, aged 85. William Boyd's novel Any Human Heart is his disjointed autobiography, a massive tome ... (Goodreads)

  9. What I Loved

    by Siri Hustvedt
    A story of two friends, their families, and the art world in New York City. A tale of love, loss, and the complexities of human relationships.

    What I Loved opens with a painting of a woman 'wearing only a man's T-shirt', with the artist's shadow across the canvas. The protagonist , art historian Leon Hertzberg (Leo), purchases the painting ... (Wikipedia)

  10. The Edible Woman

    by Margaret Atwood
    A young woman's exploration of identity, as she learns to confront her own desires.

    Marian MacAlpin works in a market research firm, writing survey questions and sampling products. She shares the top-floor apartment of a house in Toronto (never named in the novel) with her roommate ... (Wikipedia)

  11. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

    by George Saunders
    A collection of darkly comic stories, exploring the absurdities of life in a post-apocalyptic world.

    In six stories and the novella, Bounty, Saunders introduces readers to people struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world. ... (Goodreads)

  12. Before the Fall

    by Noah Hawley
    A mysterious plane crash leads to a tangled web of secrets, lies, and betrayal.

    On a foggy summer night, eleven people—ten privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter—depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: the ... (Barnes & Noble)

  13. A River Runs Through it and Other Stories

    by Norman Maclean
    A series of stories about the life of a family and the relationship between two brothers.

    Just as Norman Maclean writes at the end of "A River Runs through It" that he is "haunted by waters," so have readers been haunted by his novella. A retired English professor who began writing ... (Goodreads)

  14. The Portrait of a Lady

    by Henry James
    A young woman's journey of self-discovery, standing up to society's expectations.

    Isabel Archer, from Albany, New York , is invited by her maternal aunt, Lydia Touchett, to visit Lydia's rich husband, Daniel, at his estate near London, following the death of Isabel's father. ... (Wikipedia)

  15. A Prayer for Owen Meany

    by John Irving
    A boy's search for faith, set against a backdrop of unlikely events.

    The story is narrated by John Wheelwright, a former citizen of New Hampshire who has become a voluntary expatriate from the United States, having settled in Toronto , Ontario , Canada and taken on ... (Wikipedia)

  16. Island

    by Aldous Huxley
    A utopian society on a remote island is challenged by the reemergence of human nature.

    Englishman William Asquith "Will" Farnaby deliberately wrecks his boat on the shores of the Kingdom of Pala, an island halfway between Sumatra and the Andaman Islands , thus forcing his entry to this ... (Wikipedia)

  17. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

    by Hunter S. Thompson
    A wild and hallucinatory journey through the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas.

    The basic synopsis revolves around journalist Raoul Duke ( Hunter S. Thompson ) and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo ( Oscar Zeta Acosta ), as they arrive in Las Vegas in 1971 to report on the Mint 400 ... (Wikipedia)

  18. Heart of Darkness

    by Joseph Conrad
    A journey into the depths of the human psyche, exploring the darkness of colonialism.

    Aboard the Nellie , anchored in the River Thames near Gravesend , Charles Marlow tells his fellow sailors how he became captain of a river steamboat for an ivory trading company. As a child, Marlow ... (Wikipedia)

  19. A Wizard of Earthsea

    by Ursula K. Le Guin
    A young wizard embarks on a quest to master his own magical powers and battle a mysterious force of evil.

    Ged, the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, was called Sparrowhawk in his reckless youth. Hungry for power and knowledge, Sparrowhawk tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon ... (Goodreads)

  20. The Farthest Shore

    by Ursula K. Le Guin
    A quest to save a magical kingdom from a mysterious force of darkness.

    A strange, inexplicable malaise is spreading throughout Earthsea. Magic is losing its power; songs are being forgotten; people and animals are sickening or going mad. Accompanied by Arren, the young ... (Wikipedia)

  21. Heretics Anonymous

    by Katie Henry
    Michael joins a secret club of religious misfits at his new school, but struggles to keep his own beliefs hidden.

    * Amazon Best Book of the Month August 2018 * New York Public Library Best Books 2018 * Put an atheist in a strict Catholic school? Expect comedy, chaos, and an Inquisition., The Breakfast Club, ... (Barnes & Noble)

  22. Cathedral

    by Raymond Carver
    An unexpected encounter changes a man's outlook on life and his relationships.

    Raymond Carver’s third collection of stories, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, including the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the very different world of another. These ... (Goodreads)

  23. Love in the Time of Cholera

    by Gabriel García Márquez
    An epic love story spanning decades, exploring the power of true love.

    The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's ... (Wikipedia)

  24. The Epic of Gilgamesh

    by Anonymous
    Ancient Sumerian epic poem recounting the adventures of a hero who struggles with mortality.

    Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world’s oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells ... (Goodreads)

  25. Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited

    by Aldous Huxley
    A futuristic dystopia of a world devoid of freedom and morality.

    The novel opens in the World State city of London in AF (After Ford) 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian calendar ), where citizens are engineered through artificial wombs and childhood indoctrination ... (Wikipedia)

  26. The Arrangement

    by Mary Balogh
    A widow and a war hero agree to a marriage of convenience, but soon find themselves falling in love.

    Desperate to escape his mother’s matchmaking, Vincent Hunt, Viscount Darleigh, flees to a remote country village. But even there, another marital trap is sprung. So when Miss Sophia Fry’s ... (Goodreads)

  27. The Magicians

    by Lev Grossman
    A coming-of-age story of a young man's journey to a magical world, learning to wield its power.

    The, New York Times, bestselling novel about a young man practicing magic in the real world, now an original series on, SYFY,“,The Magicians, is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a ... (Barnes & Noble)

  28. Once Upon a Dream

    by Liz Braswell
    A retelling of Sleeping Beauty where Aurora never woke up, and Maleficent won. A dark and twisted version of the classic fairy tale.

    What if the sleeping beauty never woke up? It should be simple—a dragon defeated, a slumbering maiden, a prince poised to wake her. But when said prince falls asleep as soon as his lips meet the ... (Goodreads)

  29. Tenth of December

    by George Saunders
    A collection of stories exploring the human condition through diverse characters and their struggles.

    A young girl named Alison is kidnapped three days before her birthday. Kyle, a boy who lives nearby whose parents enforce very strict household rules, sees the event unfold and must decide whether to ... (Wikipedia)

  30. Ink and Bone

    by Lisa Unger
    A woman's search for her missing daughter leads her to a mysterious town with a dark past and dangerous secrets.

    New York Times, bestselling author Lisa Unger “builds a sense of place for The Hollows that rivals Stephen King’s Castle Rock for continuity and creepiness.” —The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) “For ... (Barnes & Noble)