Kurt Vonnegut, short story master, is on sale at Amazon

Kurt Vonnegut wrote brilliant short stories, in turn wise, sweet, funny, and prophetic — and his collected short stories are on sale today at Amazon.

Kurt Vonnegut Welcome to the Monkey HouseI never enjoyed Kurt Vonnegut’s novels and I eventually didn’t agree with his politics. Having said that, I firmly believe that he was one of the greatest short story writers in American fiction. That’s why I want to give you the heads up that a Kindle collection of his short stories — Welcome to the Monkey House, The Special Edition — is on sale today at Amazon.

The most famous short story in the book, Welcome to the Monkey House, is my least favorite in the book, but all the others are wonderful. They are in turns sweet, heartwarming, insightful, prophetic, and just plain fun. If you haven’t read Vonnegut’s short stories, and you have $3.00 lying around to spend on fun stuff, I highly recommend this book.

Also, on another subject entirely, I want to remind you that, in order to end chronic abuse from one person in the comments, I’ve had to institute a Disqus moderation feature. That means that anyone who wants to comment at this blog has to put up with being pre-approved. This includes all people who have been commenting here for years. Fortunately, once I designate you as “trusted,” though, you can comment as freely as before. A warning, though: Those who are approved and abuse that privilege, can lose their “trusted” status and again return to “pre-approval” purgatory.

This weekend, I’ll try to check the comments every 1-3 hours to make sure people aren’t trapped in purgatory too long. After that, I promise to check comments at least twice a day so that anyone who is commenting for the first time since I put this new system in place doesn’t have to wait too long for comments to show up and a conversation to begin.