Book Review!

I recently finished reading two equally good books and here go their SMBRs.

To Sir, With Love – SMBR: 4.5
Author: E. R. Braithwaite
Category: Fiction

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest – SMBR: 5
Author: Ken Kesey
Category: Fiction

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‘Because he knows 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. He knows there’s a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girlfriend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won’t let the pain blot out the humor no more’n he’ll let the humor blot out the pain.’

The above lines are the best lines I have read in a really long time. If the entire book could be summed up in a few lines, these would be them. The book is so lucidly written that it makes you realize the folly of harboring antagonism and silly prejudices. You got to live every moment and not only enjoy it but also bask in its glory, for every passing moment holds so many surprises for you that you would be wasting away your years spitting and mulling over the circumstances rather than enjoying the joys and sorrows accompanying them. How many times have you felt the anger and resentment, for someone, overpowering you and when have you also felt the urge to resort to some kind of violence, no matter how minimalist, just to quench your desire to take revenge? I would say, often! The key to your being supreme in the end is to stay calm. Your flash of anger would die away as quickly as it came about. Your calmness in that fleeting second could actually pave the way to your happiness.

The book is primarily a satire on the way things were managed and run around in a mental institution, bordering on the tyranny of a one-woman show. It was under the care of Miss Ratchead, the Big Nurse, who was running it on behalf of the all-powerful combine with its ever-widening grip on the society and its ways. And then came along Randle Patrick McMurphy, who with his jovial & good-natured personality, calm demeanor and guileless effrontery not only won the lost battle for the forever-demoralized and eternally-subdued inmates but also made the Big Nurse look silly in front of him.

The book is an amazing read and more so for its plot which is heroic yet tragic and humorous yet pensive.

‘..one flew east, one flew west! One flew over the cuckoo’s nest..’

P.S. For more information on SMBR, visit Blink.

Au revoir