I didn't want to put up those titles as "amazing", only as "pretty darn good (with the caveats: to me, for now, until something else blows it out of the water)". I won't be writing articles extolling their virtues, and I certainly don't think they are timeless.

Maybe you are pretty meh on those books, because something else has captured your fancy much more. I would be interested in knowing what captures your fancy, because we have a common ground we're working off of (in terms of what we've both read).

> In suspect we're in that ambiguous area in which people have different opinions but I do find it a little absurd to reference those three books in response to a comment which implicitly disses Vonnegut.

I wouldn't dare diss Vonnegut, or even Le Guin, or any writer, for that matter---it's not my place, but when I come across articles that evangelize them in the way the OP does, I can't help but think "but what's so great about them?". For instance, Vonnegut established tropes and themes that writers today riff off of constantly, so he's a pioneer. I get that. In some distant sense, I can appreciate that too. I just can't enjoy his works the same way I can with stuff that has come out more recently, because his stuff doesn't seem novel to me anymore.