I spent a month in Ann Arbor, Michigan working on an experiment
which involved using a big laser to blow up a tiny target. When I
wasn't in the lab or seeking out brown sugar pop tarts I had a
chance to wander round some of Ann Arbor's many excellent second
hand bookshops. One of my favourites was the Dawn Treader, which
had shelves and shelves of maths, science, and philosophy books and
lots of others. I ended up in the 'V' fiction section and was torn
between a book by Voltaire (Candide I think) and a book by Kurt
Vonnegut (Player Piano). The Voltaire book looked pretty heavy going
so Player Piano it was.
I fell in love with the book. Entirely by coincidence the main
character was a disillusioned scientist which was pretty close to
home for me at the time. The book also features some incorrigible
tinkerers, who I empathise much more with these days (something I
am quite happy about).
I read the book mainly in pizza and burger places, so it got a bit
greasy and one of the covers fell off. I was hoping to fix it with
some of the super strong tape used to hold experiments together but
I never did in the end.
Player Piano got me into Kurt Vonnegut books. On a trip to San
Francisco I found an old copy of Slaughterhouse Five which I also
really enjoyed (although I actually teared up a bit while reading
it). That book had bright blue on the edge of the pages and was in
bad shape when I started it; by the time I finished it it had broken
in half sadly. I've read a couple of other Kurt Vonnegut books since
then and enjoyed all of them, but Player Piano is still my favourite,
in part because of when and where I read it.
