(Book 436 From 1001 Books) - One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken KeseyOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) is a novel written by Ken Kesey. Set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital, the narrative serves as a study of the institutional processes and the human mind as well as a critique of behaviorism and a celebration of humanistic principles. Bo Goldman adapted the novel into a 1975 film directed by Miloš Forman, which won five Academy Awards.The book is narrated by "Chief" Bromden, a gigantic y...

“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.” “He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.”Ken Kesey’s novel has been on my TBR since March 2014. I do not know why it took me so long to finally read it, maybe it was the subject, but I am satisfied that I finally did. It is indeed a masterpiece and it will break your heart, as good books seem to do. In short, the novel is set in a psych...

I just watched an interview with Stephen Fry and he mentioned this book. Read it a long long time ago. Read it for highschool already I think. Remember being shocked and amazed. Scary, funny, dark and wonderful at the same time. Un-be-lievable. And I just realized this is one of the best and impressive books I ever read. Definitely a top tenner ever.

“All I know is this: nobody’s very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”- Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s NestThis is a book I had little interest in reading. A novel set in an insane asylum? No thanks. I spent four years of my legal career defending indigent clients facing commitment before our local Board of Mental Health. It was an experience I had not trained for, prepared for, or frankly could have imagined befo...

…one flew east, one flew west,One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.This classic book gave birth to a movie which won a truckload of Academy Awards. This means the majority of readers are familiar with one or the other and I thought a very brief review would be enough; something along the lines, "The book is very good". Seeing that some people miss the point of the story I had to ramble a little more than this short sentence, sorry. A ward of a mental hospital in Oregon was ruled by an iron hand of it...

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a groundbreaking book and it is a manifesto about the rights of man to have an individuality……a guy has to learn to get along in a group before he'll be able to function in a normal society; how the group can help the guy by showing him where he's out of place; how society is what decides who's sane and who isn't, so you got to measure up.Are you different from the others? Then we’ll correct you, make you fit and suit.…people will force you one way or the other...

4/18/22 gosh how many times have I actually read this now? I honestly do not know. And every time it’s like I’ve never read it; I take away something different. Tonight’s lesson is I think will be self esteem and how fragile that is, how it can take one person to tear it down or one person to build it. How no matter how hard you try to be positive, how you want to love yourself just the way you are and you even talk to yourself in the mirror-in the bathroom, in the driver’s seat, maybe the swive...

This modern classic book overshadowed by the modern classic Jack Nicholson movie of the same name, still packs a punch at face value... the story of a cocksure womanising drifter who feigns insanity to avoid imprisonment and finds himself compelled to fight against the regime of a mental hospital ward run by the 'dark' Nurse Ratched; he also strives for his fellow inmates to get more out of their lives.So lovable anti-hero versus evil domineering nurse, who is allowed to abuse her power because

I needed some time to get used to the writing style, but letting the Chief (an outside figure, who, due to his "deafness", doesn't intervene with the main storyline too much) is certainly a stroke of genius, and after a while, I got used to his way of telling the story.All the characters found a place in my heart, and they are what make the book so remarkable and memorable. I thought they were some unnecessary scenes, but they were really minor, so they didn't put a huge dent into my enjoyment.T...

Reading Road Trip 2020Current location: OregonI took a hard fall last week on a couple of steps and injured my right foot. I can't drive, and I'm walking with a cane, and, to make matters worse, it snowed for a couple of days, and both my front porch and my back porch are now covered with ice. As if I hadn't already had two partially collapsed lungs from COVID earlier in the year, as if I haven't already been home, 24/7, with my two youngest children, since March 13, as if I didn't already have

(Throwback Review) This novel tells us the story of despotic Nurse Ratched, who works in Oregon State mental hospital, and McMurphy, a patient who questions the rules imposed on the inmates by her in the hospital. It is considered one of the most controversial medical novels ever written and was banned multiple times for several reasons. Multiple actresses turned down the role of Nurse Ratched when this novel was made into a movie. Everyone was scared to play her role as they were afraid

My friend Ed was recently updating his books with reviews on here and this book popped up in my feed. It's my husband's favorite movie/book of all time and I realized that I had never picked the book up. I've watched bits and pieces of the movie in the three thousand times that my husband has watched it, but I had never experienced it first hand.I'm gutted.Why have I not just sat down and watched the film that was made from this book? I'm completely off my rocker. Randle Patrick McMurphy. Tha...

“You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself” I was very familiar with the 1975 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest starring Jack Nicholson, but I had never read Ken Kesey's novel. I am happy to have changed that! I don't know why I didn't think about whose viewpoint the story was being told from when I watched the movie, but this perspective in the book added another dimensi...

Last night, at about 2 am, I finished 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' by Ken Kesey. I lay awake for a long time afterward, watching the bars of light on the ceiling, holding my eyes open until the pupils dilated enough to shrink the light, then I'd blink and have to start all over.Finally I sat up and turned on the lights. The book had done something to me. Like it'd punched me in the face and said, "Do something, you idiot!"So I gathered up a bunch of sentimental shit from around my apartment...

I have a love/hate relationship with this book. The writing and imagery are superb and I always love a "down with tyrannical overloads, generic living, and medicalization" moral, but its other lesson leaves me cringing. In the basic knowledge I have of Ken Kesey, the book ultimately seems very misogynistic and anti-feminist. I'm all for a gender balance, but this book botches up the entire process in a method that purposely lacks tongue-in-cheek flair. Basically, the plot seems to involve men me...

Profane, hilarious, disturbing, heartbreaking, shocking – powerful.Ken Kesey’s genre defining 1962 novel that was made into a Broadway play and then made into an Academy Award winning film starring Jack Nicholson will inspire strong emotions. I can see people loving it or hating it.I loved it.First of all, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart: a book that is banned from libraries has a place on my bookshelf. So all you amateur censurers out there – you are my enemy. I don’t like you. I de...

"There is generally one person in every situation you must never underestimate the power of."A novel that celebrates the counterculture and the aspects on the fringes of society, "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" is a book that mythologizes the individual (even the dishonest or vulgar individual) over the restraints of society. I have mixed feelings about that message.The battle between being true to oneself and giving into societal expectations is identified here as the battle between one's min...

A Spectacle of Lit's Power to Stand against Oppression "I remember when, I remember ... when I lost my mindDoes that make me crazy?"Gnarls Barkley, Crazy, 2006.The monotypic, iconoclastic novel illustrating the evils of unbridled government oppression in institutional forms within a democracy, both subtle and ruthless. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest evinces the fortisimmo force of literature as a "monument of wit" that "will survive the monuments of power." Francis Bacon.After working at a

"Ting. Tingle, tingle, tremble toes,She’s a good fisherman, catches hens, puts ‘em inna pensWire blier, limber lock, three geese inna flockOne flew east, one flew westOne flew over the cuckoo’s nestO-U-T- spells out… goose swoops down and plucks you out."The title of the book was taken from a nursery rhyme but the first 3 and last lines were from the book, i.e., thoughts inside the head of the schizophrenic narrator, Chief Bromden as the nursery rhyme was used to be sung to him by his grandmothe...

loved this.One of my favourites.