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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
emotional
funny
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A quick read to finish out my 2024 goal. Gotta love a crazy Irishman.
this book was very strange and very intriguing. i have always loved reading about psychology and mental health and this takes it to a whole other level. it blew my mind with how normalized things like electric shock therapy, lobotomies, etc. used to be….. you hear about it but i didn’t think it was truly the answer in society and insane asylums…. a good read with rich characters and lots of detail inside the minds of those in the asylum set in the 1960s i believe
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
McMurphy escapes his work camp prison sentence by claiming to be a psychopath to get into the seemingly cushy psychiatric ward. Little does he know that under the eye of Nurse Ratched, the patients here aren't safe. "Chief" Bromden, pretending to be deaf and dumb, observes the whole ward more than anyone else can - but sometimes can't trust what he sees to be true.
I read this in my vlog where I showed a realistic week of reading for me as someone with a 9-5. You can watch it here!
This book does a good job of showing how people with mental illness - or who were supposed to have mental illness - were treated at the time, and in some places how they are still treated. How it was often a trap. They were infantilized and not allowed much agency. They were given treatments that were damaging to them. They were under a Catch-22 where it became impossible to escape. In those terms, this did what it said on the tin. My favorite part of this book was whenever we get peeks about our POV character, when he looks back on his childhood and when he occasionally hallucinates. He is an unreliable narrator possibly because of his mental illness he MIGHT have had, but it's no doubt the shock therapy and drugs have caused him to disassociate from reality.
However, this book is definitely of its time. It's written by a man who writes women in a specific light who loves to shove seeing boobs into places that make very little sense. There's a good amount of outdated language and stuff, which is par for the course for a book that's sixty years old. Otherwise, I wasn't that invested in following McMurphy. After reading Chain Gang All Stars, I can respect following a not-great person and seeing how their treatment is still unjustified, but he just wasn't nearly as interesting to me as Bromden was. I also was surprised at how Nurse Ratched was characterized here - it was different than my expectations in a way that I don't know how to explain (that's neither here nor there though).
Overall, I totally respect what this book has done to show the poor treatment of those with mental illnesses, but it didn't focus on what I cared about and the outdated nature of it put me off of it more.
I read this in my vlog where I showed a realistic week of reading for me as someone with a 9-5. You can watch it here!
This book does a good job of showing how people with mental illness - or who were supposed to have mental illness - were treated at the time, and in some places how they are still treated. How it was often a trap. They were infantilized and not allowed much agency. They were given treatments that were damaging to them. They were under a Catch-22 where it became impossible to escape. In those terms, this did what it said on the tin. My favorite part of this book was whenever we get peeks about our POV character, when he looks back on his childhood and when he occasionally hallucinates. He is an unreliable narrator possibly because of his mental illness he MIGHT have had, but it's no doubt the shock therapy and drugs have caused him to disassociate from reality.
However, this book is definitely of its time. It's written by a man who writes women in a specific light who loves to shove seeing boobs into places that make very little sense. There's a good amount of outdated language and stuff, which is par for the course for a book that's sixty years old. Otherwise, I wasn't that invested in following McMurphy. After reading Chain Gang All Stars, I can respect following a not-great person and seeing how their treatment is still unjustified, but he just wasn't nearly as interesting to me as Bromden was. I also was surprised at how Nurse Ratched was characterized here - it was different than my expectations in a way that I don't know how to explain (that's neither here nor there though).
Overall, I totally respect what this book has done to show the poor treatment of those with mental illnesses, but it didn't focus on what I cared about and the outdated nature of it put me off of it more.