John Thyer - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I just finished this book and I absolutely loved it. I chose it because the movie had been on my radar a while as it stars Jack Nicholson, who I became a huge fan of after his spectacular performances in The Shining and Tim Burton's Batman. Both of these films cast Nicholson as someone completely off his rocker, so I found the idea of him playing a perfectly sane person being held in an asylum to be delightfully ironic. It's also impossible to ignore the film's high pedigree. I always like to read the book before I see a movie, so seeing the possibility to do both, for class credit, no less, I grabbed at the chance immediately (though I still want to read Catch-22 at some point.)

Of course, the movie certainly had a lot to live up to, as the book is as much a masterpiece of literature as the film is a masterpiece of cinema. Time Magazine and many other sources have cited One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as one of the Top 100 novels of the century, and for good reason. The book was a blast to read, and I blazed through it in a few days, unable to put it down. It's an incredibly good book, and well worth a read for fans of the film and for fans of excellent literature in general. The writing and narration by the Chief is endlessly fascinating, as are the slow reveals into the psyches of the Chief, McMurphy, the conniving, megalomaniac, control freak Nurse Ratched, and the fun and likable cast of characters that make up the ward. It's can be very humorous as well as very dramatic, and the story is well-paced and never drags on glacially. I can't recommend it enough, and I can't wait to see the film.

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew East
One flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.