V's Pick #19: Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

Wait, what's this? A non-school book (ever since Cher called non-academic reading that in Clueless I've done the same)? Yes...I fit one in. However, I actually started reading this on Christmas break and it's taken me until two nights ago (in APRIL) to finish it. That's what a few pages a night right before bed gets you.
As a fan of Vonnegut, this book came highly regarded by any one who I ever spoke his name around so naturally, I had pretty high expectations. And naturally, as is with most things that start that way, I wasn't as excited about it as everyone else has been by the end. Don't get me wrong, it's essential Vonnegut - crazy and inappropriate, all over the place with the fourth-wall broken time and time again. There's Drano drinking suicide wives, gay sons named Bunny, big-breasted secretaries who fall in love with car salesmen, bitten off fingers, "bad chemicals," pictures of underpants and the waist or penis size (female, male respectively) listed for every new character...but it lacked something that other Vonnegut has carried for me. It wasn't until sitting down to write to all of you about it that I figured it out: I'm a sucker for a happy ending. While this book didn't end in a way I would describe "happy" or "sad" it didn't end in the way I'm used to Vonnegut ending - in some form of hope in a hopeless place, the pay off for all the treachery you travelled with him. I didn't think I really needed that from him as an author until this book rolled off my bed two nights ago finished and I didn't have that release that follows. BOC was a fun journey, a worthy read, a quasi-history of America and the home to some pretty fantastic drawings, but I guess I needed more. If this is the only Vonnegut people read (which from what I gather, it is), they're seriously missing out on some of the greatest elements of his authorial artistry.