Kurt Vonnegut
The first Vonnegut novel I read was Hocus Pocus, which--I swear I am not making this up--my mother bought for me to read at fourth-grade sleepaway camp. It was a last-minute purchase at Marc's discount store. I can still remember her pausing in front of the picked-over rack of paperbacks, flustered: "Here, this one's by Kurt Vonnegut. He's a good writer."

My favorites are Galapagos and Slaughterhouse-Five. The ones I've read the most are probably Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, which I scrounged not long after Hocus Pocus and reread over and over while I was growing up.

I have vivid memories of exactly where I was when I first read most of his books. Hocus Pocus is the cabin at camp, of course, at night under the covers with a flashlight and in the morning while the other girls dressed for breakfast and braided each other's hair. Breakfast of Champions is my aunt's cluttered attic in the summer heat. Welcome to the Monkey House is the floor of the high-school library. "Poo-tee-weet?" calls up a robin perched in the shelter of a snow-covered bush in Saint Stephen's Green, the only snow of the winter the year I was in Dublin. Galapagos makes me carsick.

He was at the top of the list of people Andrew and I wanted to meet someday, just to thank him. It's strange and sad to think that we won't.