by Ken Kesey

This was a hard read because it’s narrated from the point of view of one of the mental patients; namely, the Chief, the most memorable character in the movie – I came into this having seen the movie, once, about 15 years ago. I was psyched that it was told from “Chief” Bromden’s perspective at first, but it’s a little hard to go with him down so many of his schizoid journeys.

It was fun to read how Nurse Ratched and MacMurphy were originally written; and the most memorable, climactic scenes were very true to the book.

PS Extremely sexist and racist.

by Ellyn Gaydos

This book is about the hard work of being a farmhand, spending a day with back bent doing serious vegetable farming, and killing animals. Killing a lot of animals.

Very poetic. Was sometimes hard for me to read for an hour at a time, because of its lack of narrative arc. But beautiful in places.

“I love him too, but I am promised to farming. I choose it over him every time. It is not like choosing between two people. How could you trade the sky, the water, or the mountains for a single heart? Instead I imagine the earth opening to take me into its fold.”

“In the heart of summer, [we] are dwarfed by the farm, the sheer life force of it, pulled by the demands of plants and animals, pressed like blunt objects into the ground, buried in the work we have wrought.”

“[T]here is always enough food to eat. This is the compensation for the crude work of training life into channels of fecundity.”