One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

  What inspired me to read this book was the movie. I had seen the movie years ago and really liked it. When I found out that there was a book, I had to read it. The story is about Randle McMurphy, a wily and rambunctious man who gets himself committed into a psychiatric ward to spend the rest of his prison sentence. Chief Bromden, a fellow patient in the ward who pretends he’s deaf and dumb, narrates the story of McMurphy’s antics and rivalry with the authority of Nurse Ratchet.
  I was really excited before reading the book and my expectations were well met. The first few chapters were a bit slow. However, by the middle of the novel, I knew I was giving this book five stars. Seeing the ward through Chief Bromden’s eyes and his internal dialog was great. It gave the story a very unique edge. The writing is marvelous as the little isolated world of the ward and the patients are painted before the reader. As the plot progresses, the story also explores themes dealing with the human spirit.
  I loved this book and highly recommend it.

View all my reviews

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"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." -Chief Bromden

Musings & Trivia:

• Book(1962) & Movie(1975): The movie and book are generally the same, but of course some things are changed.  The biggest difference is that the movie is not narrated by Chief Bromden.  It is more of a third person presentation of the story and the Chief is just another character.  Not to spoil anything I'll only say there are other various elements that are re-arranged and merged together in the movie.  No major plot elements are left out in the movie.  In the film Jack Nicholson plays McMurphy and won an Academy Award for Best Actor for this role.  Actually, in total the film won five academy awards and was nominated for four others.  Quite a decorated film.
• You know, in print you find typos every once and a while.  It happens but this is something else:

• About the Author: Anyways, after some googling, page 5 was the correct one.  Ken Kesey was born September 17, 1935 in La Junta, Colorado and then his family moved to Oregon.  In 1957  Kesey received a degree in speech and communication from the University of Oregon's School of Journalism.  In 1958 he enrolled in Stanford's creative writing program.  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was inspired by Kesey's experiences as an orderly at a veteran's hospital in California in 1959.  He passed away November 10, 2001 at the age of sixty six from complications after a surgery.

Next Book Review: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Curious to know what other books I'll be reading? Click here to find out

Have you read this book? or seen the movie? If so what do you think? What is the worst typo you've ever found? Feel free to reply here or on twitter @MandyCalvin .  Comments are appreciated.

Cited:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073486/awards

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Kesey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Flew_Over_the_Cuckoo%27s_Nest_(novel)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0450181/

The Postman

The Postman by David Brin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Postman by David Brin is a science fiction adventure set in a crumbled United States during the aftermath of war and disease. Society has been blown back to a primitive age where survival is the only priority. Gordon is a drifter traveling through the wilderness when a series of events led him a long abandoned postal truck. He puts on the uniform and takes the bag of mail and thus begins his role of a Postman going from clan to clan exchanging hope for food. However, what begins as a ploy for Gordon to get food becomes something greater as his role inspires a call for change in others and in himself.

The plot is intriguing and sees the reader interested to the end. The book over all was ok. There were moving moments, but some of the suppose-to-be-epic moments came off as more trite than epic. The characters were diverse and memorable which I found to be a redeeming highlight in the book along with the progress of the story. Brin plays a bit with philosphy and some social issues in his book, which was more of a sideshow than an addition to the story.

There is a movie out there with Kevin Costner, which is good. However the movie and the book are extremely different. Aside from artistic changes during an adaptation, the plots are two completely different animals. Characters are given different roles or missing completely in the film and multiple key factors are changed. So watching the movie would not replace the book, not in the least.

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Next Book Review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

Curious to know what other books I'll be reading? Click here to find out Have you read this book? If so what did you think?

Feel free to reply here or on twitter @MandyCalvin . Comments are appreciated.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I will ascend that I had been spoiled by a review before I read the book. It probably robbed me of some of the suspense, however I'd like to think I was able to better assess the quality of the story. Despite that I knew the ending, I did find the journey fascinating. There is no doubt that this was a brilliant murder mystery; the plot twisted so many times, it's dizzying. The characters were developed and memorably charming. My only qualms were that it was difficult to really get into the story due to lack of imagery in the writing. If you are looking for a good mystery with an outstanding plot, this is with out a doubt a perfect story to read.

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"Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth.  The truth however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to the seeker after it." -Hercule Poirot

Musings & Facts:

• It's interesting how all the little clues come together when you figure out the end result.  Especially in this mystery, almost everything was a clue.  Although all the clues were there, the answer was still elusive.  That's what I think makes a great mystery; the answer is stuck to your forehead.
• About Agatha: She was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller in the UK on 15 September 1890.  She worked as a nurse during WWI.  She married her husband, Archibald Christie, on Christmas Eve 1914.  Six publishers rejected her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.  However, she was not discouraged and almost five years after writing the book, it was published by Jone Lane in 1920.  She divorced her husband in 1928 after finding out he was having an affair.  She then remarried to Max Mallowan, in 1930 whom she shared 46 years of marriage which ended with her death.  Agatha Christie wrote 66 mystery novels, short stories, plays, and under the pen name, Mary Westmacott, 6 romance novels.
• I loved the character of Hercule Poirot and Caroline Sheppard.  They both had very distinguisable characters.
• The story is written in first person from the point of view of Dr. James Sheppard.  However most of the story is dialog between the characters and some in between action.  It didn't include much imagery like I said in the review above.  I've read that a writer should balance the amount of dialog in their writing.  Too much or too little could be bad, but I think it depends on the subject your writing about.  If you're writing from first person you can get away with less dialog since you are in the head of a character, they can kind of dialog with themselves.  Too much dialog can get a bit boring and sidetracked if the write isn't careful.  Of course that goes back to the rule that every sentence must have a purpose pertaining to its story, dialog or not.  The dialog in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was well done and every bit of it was crucial to the development of the plot. but there was just not much in-between all the talking.  However.... no no no, I don't want to spoil anything if you decide to read the book.

Next Book Review: The Postman by David Brin
Curious to know what other books I'll be reading? Click here to find out

Have you read this book? If so what do you think?  What do you think makes a good mystery?  Do you think that too much dialog is bad?  Feel free to reply here or on twitter @MandyCalvin .  Comments are appreciated.


Citation:
http://agathachristie.com/about-christie/christie-records/75-facts/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie

Beyond the Spine: Atlas Shrugged

   I had actually planed to write this post a month ago but 645,000 words took a little longer to read than expected.  This is my first book review for this blog, and I hope to do more.  Of course reading takes time, but I should find more time for it because reading is important to developing as a writer.  As you read you are observing another writer as a reader.  You see how their words move you, entertain you, or bore you.  Taking note of their techniques you can develop your own writing skill.  Anyways, on with Atlas Shrugged.  Note that there won't be any spoilers.
   I am so happy I read this book.  Thought it was very long, it was worth it.  If I had to denounce anything it would be that Ms.Rand does preach quite a bit about her philosophy, Objectivism.  It's very thought provoking, but the occasional six page long speeches given by the characters about it gets somewhat dry and you start to skip sentences or paragraphs to get on with the story.  The book isn't a heart pounding action, but my attention was held through out the whole story.  There were chapters where I couldn't put the book down.  The biggest test of how well a story is told is if you feel emotion for the characters and their situations.  I definitely had emotional moments through the book.  I sighed during the romance, I yelled at the morons, I frowned at the mysteries, I laughed at the humor, and I smiled at the success. 

Writing Observations:
+This book had a huge cast of characters.  Generally that would be a bad thing, but Ms.Rand pulled if off very nicely.  The problem with having a lot of characters is getting them confused or forgetting them.  Yet, the characters in Atlas Shrugged were very memorable.  They had unique personalities, traits, names, and professions.  Particularly in this book what made most of her characters easy to remember was their professions.  Why is that? A profession, what they do, or hobby gives a sort of symbol or title to remember a character by.  An example out of the book was one of the main characters, Dagny Taggart,  who ran the train company Taggart Transcontinental.  That's easy to remember, Dagny the Train Lady.  See how her profession becomes a part of her name and identity?  Pertaining to making unique characters, there was another thing I realized having to do with names.  The main characters had distinguishable first and last names.  I never focused on this before.  I just figured that long names were bad, but not anymore.  By giving a character a last name it makes them more unique.  John? John who?  Why John Galt the mysterious of course.

My simplified rating: 4.9 out of 5

Have you ever read Atlas Shrugged? If so, how did you like it?