Ken Kesey Books

Looking for a smart, funny, verbal frenzy to delight school-age audiences? This one is a MUST DO! Reading it with carte blanche playfulness a la "Southrin' Stah-yle" you will have as much FUN reading this one aloud as any of your listeners. Don't forget to glance up now and then to see all the twinkling eyes. I read this two years ago and maybe stunned the 1st graders into silence with the roaring of the bear but the 3rd grade today quickly piped in the chorus of "...EAT...YOU... UP!!" (heavy emphasis on the "puh!") Dare I say more fun than sharing the stories of Brer' Rabbit? Same vein, but updated/smarter/slicker with Kesey's savvy vocabulary. (4.9 AR level - or, "fourth grade, ninth month" for independent readers). Anyone who loves language, acting, humorous moral tales will LOVE this one.

I loved reading this book to kids in the library. It has tons of great adjectives. It's full of fun and keeps kids guessing as to 'what will happen next?' I want to own this book!

"Tricker the Squirrel" is a wonderful story for young and old alike. I was lucky enough to read the book years ago and came across a videotaped performance of Kesey's rendition that is equally wonderful. When the holidays come around and I get to spend time with my young nephews and niece, it is one of my favorite stories to read. It gives me a chance to open up with fun inerpretations of the characters. The kids love it and they love to take their turns too being "Big Double", "Little Tricker" and the various others that get eaten by Big Double.

The illustrations are drop-dead gorgeous but the story really steals the show. My husband and I are always quoting from this one--"and then I'm gonna DRINK SOME BUTTERMILK!" I love the dialect and the wonderful similies ("like an elevator up a greasy groove"). Can't wait to have kids so I can read it to them.

This is a wonderful children's story in itself. I had it read to me (suprisingly) my Senior year in high school and I have fallen in love with it ever since. What is amazing about the this book is it takes very adult themes and puts them in terms children can understand without exposing the true horrors of man. And even more amazing is the paralells to Kesey's more famous novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." For example is Tricker the Squirrel not earily similar to McMurphy? And isn't Big Double the Bear a little too much like Nurse Ratched? But that is why this is such a beautiful book. A great book to read aloud to children and an even better one to read to yourself as an adult.

This is an excellent book, one that not only tells you what it was like in those days between "beats" and "hippies," but it shows you in pictures. This is a brilliant idea for a book and one that makes me wish I had been there.

I bought the book after reading Electric Kool-Aide Acid Test for the third time. I really wanted to know more about what Mountain Girl, Cassidy, Gretchin Fetchin, and Babbs looked like, and scenes from the Trip. What a great book. I would recommend it to anyone who is reading, has read, or will be reading the book, Electric Kool-Aide Acid Test. This would be a great companion as your were reading it, and were exposed to the characters in the book.

i bought this book after reading The Electic Kool Aid Acid Tests, primarily because i wanted to compare the photography to wolfe's narrative. I'm afraid that it hasn't satiated my craving for more..now i am seeking Garage Sale & Furthur Inquiry. Anyone who loves what the 60's were all about and feels slighted for not yet being around then....'either you're on the bus, or you're off the bus'!

this was just great. for those of us who couldn't be there for perry lane, the bus trip, or the acid tests, this is a great account of the time. you don't realize how important kesey was to the movement until you read this. on the bus is really a quick bio of kesey. it helps you to understand how kesey took over where kerouac left off. you really feel as if you know kesey and neal after finishing this book. if you are a bohemian, beat, hippie, or any combination, then this is the book to get.

Anyone who is a Kesey fan MUST read this book. It is basically the photo album which correlates with Wolfe's Electric Kool-Ade Acid Test. It gives more insight into the minds of the pranksters and others. I highly recommend this book to any who is interested in the counterculture. The book as well as the trip are truly legendary.

Do you love the writings of Ken Kesey? Buy this.

Do you want to relive a magic moment in the past, or want a better understanding of what the spirit of the 60s was all about? Buy this!

Do you want to laugh, cry, and have a great time? Buy this!!

Spit in the Ocean #7 brings to a conclusion a project Ken Kesey started more than a quarter of a century ago. In 1974, he laid out plans to self-publish seven issues of a literary magazine by this title, each issue to have a different theme and editor. By 1981, six issues had appeared, but the leader of the Merry Pranksters was ready to move on to other ventures.

Now, two year's after Kesey's departure at age 66, his friend Ed McClanahan has edited that final issue of "Spit," appropriately all about the man who gave the world so much joy. There are contributions from famous names like Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe and Larry McMurtry, but there's also lots from others who were touched by Kesey's boundless spirit and zest for life.

There are letters, interviews, memoirs, song lyrics, photos and more between these covers. I bet Kesey would have loved it. If they could have somehow included a DVD and scratch-and-sniff, he would have loved it even better. This book does a wonderful service in keeping alive the spirit of the writer, painter, filmmaker, jester, teacher, activist, wrestler, leader and lover of life named Ken Kesey.--William C. Hall

Only two reviews for this (well, now three)? How unfortunate. A lovely, insightfully odd, and sometimes twisted tome. Good reading for this distant admirer of the thoughts and processes of the time, the place, and the man.

This book is loving remembrances of people who knew Kesey. Halfway through the book I forced myself to slow down, because I did not want to finish the book so fast. I wanted to savor the innate wisdom and humor of Ken Kesey for as long as possible. The world is a richer place because of his passing through it, and this book shares some of his life with us. He truly fought the good fight. His spirit is carried on by the many friends he had, and I thank them for sharing with us.

I loved this book. When I couldn't find a good copy of "On the Bus" I went looking for some Kesey I had not read. Garage Sale satisfied my craving. Great book regardless, but a must read for any Kesey fan.

Only Kesey could make this premise (a self-indulging scrapbook collection of writings, pictures and tidbits) work so well. Gratuitous, yes, and sometimes annoyingly, well... hippie-ish, this GARAGE SALE still has some great litte items. I especially like the Krassner interview where ol' Kesey explains his Pro-Life, anti-abortion position with the clarity of a scientist and the zeal of a backwoods preacher! I wish every American would read it.

I don't know where you might dig up this gold mine nowadays, but it WILL be worth the search. (Most University libraries seem to have an old worn-out copy, actually.)

Check it out.

I am amazed by the this book. I think I'd almost forgot what good writing was! This story about how the Inuits came to know the "sea people" - sea lions is beautifully written and wonderful. I bought this at a budget book store and can't believe it was ever out of print. Just read it, you'll love it!

Ksey is as stunning a children's writer as he is a novelist. His words coupled with Neil Waldman's stunning watercolors will take you and your child on an immaginative flight through this amazing folk tale.

I felt that this book was extremely well written. I enjoyed the entire book from start to finish. I liked how Kesey used McMurphy to make all the characters stronger, and I really liked when the Chief finally broke his silence. I felt that was very important, and it showed that McMurphy had a positive effect on the people around him. I enjoyed the end of the book when the Chief escaped by throwing the control panel through the window, a seemingly impossible feat. When he smothered McMurphy it made sense because McMurphy would have never wanted the nurse to get the better of him, he'd rather be dead. I rank this book a 5 and i would recommend it to any reader who enjoys to read.

Great book. I hadn't read it since the 60's!
So much better than the movie. It was our book club's September reading. A wide range of women from 40-75. It was all agreed upon that this book was worth reading again.

This book deserves to be a classic and may remain one for quite a long time. The first reason is that it is an adventure book in a strange country, beyond all frontiers and borders, in a psychic world, that of an asylum. It is full of suspense and typically the fight between two people, an inmate, a man, on one hand, a nurse, a woman, on the other hand. Both white with the rest of the personnel being black and the rest of the inmates being europeans, except for one who is an Indian. Clear cut adventure and action with blood, violence, wit and enough sex to be appealing. The second reason is that it is an extremely detailed trip down into the psychiatric health system, into the institutionalizing of all displeasing people, all disrupting people, all disquieting people, in one word people that cannot live in society without causing some kind of a stir. All types are studied here and all cases are refused as being the results of some repressed personal sexual drive. It may be the case, but most of the time it is just plain repressed individuals, rejected individualities, refused personalities. They are locked up away from society for this society to go on thinking all its members are beautiful, clever and brilliantly aware of what the future will be and what they have to do to make it come faster. But that is not all. The novel is an allegory too, an allegory of what changing a society may be, of what historical change may mean. The allegory follows a pattern. Change can only come from the rebellion of the victims of the dominant social order, the Combine as Chrief Bromden calls it. This is the typical revolutionary pattern. But Kesey adds the fact that this rebellion of the main victims can only come if some particular person arrives among them and wakes up in them the energies they need to become rebellious, to recapture their freedom from the Combine. The pattern of the Savior, the guru, etc. But this pattern is defeated in a way because the Combine's strategy will be to isolate this leader, victimize him in order to reduce his influence, or even destroy him if necessary, in this case with a good old lobotomy that leaves him a vegetable for everyone to admire in fear and awe. And yet things will fail for the Combine, because in any modern democratic society people are individuals and they use their individual rights to vote with their feet against the Combine. In a word the Combine fails because everyone runs away from it and leves it alone in the battlefield which is no longer a battlefield but a plain empty wasteland. That's how the Combine is forced to accept change and to change. This optimistic ending is contained in the symbolic last scene or episode, that of the self-liberation and escape of the Indian Chief. He finds out and we find out with him that nothing was wrong with him, except that his presence was disruptive for the plans of the Combine that required his village to be bought up and its inhabitants to be scattered and taken care of with good old fire-water. And that is the last level of allegory : the repressed past of a country, people, culture, individual will always finds its way to freedom and regeneration, and then the whole world will have to make do with it. The Combine, the establishment of any society, can always sacrifice some people, leaders or not, on the altar of their established power, sooner or later this established power will crumble under the pushing from those it has repressed and exploited since it took over from another establishment before it. Cyclical instating of one establishment against another and of its falling down in front of a third one. Is there any meaning in these historical cycles ? No one knows and no one can know, though quite too many people pretend to know and have a ball of crystal in the back of their eyes.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne

I was fortunate enough to read this book before ever seeing the movie. The movie was decent, but it in no way captures what this book is all about. This book is the work of a genius. Do yourself a favor, don't rent the movie from Blockbuster, read this book, and carry its memory with you forever.

The first half of this book is quite slow. It does have its funny and sincere moments though. If the first half of the book was as well written as the last half, it would deem five stars. The protagonist in this tale is a good natured lug who tries to inject the spirit of life into a ward of patients of mental illness. He unveils the hollowness and darkness they live day in, and day out, while striving to weaken the clinical hold over them by the head nurse. It is a touching and heartwarming story. It illuminates the contemptible views we had, and to a large extent still have of "mental illness."

There are some books I feel every teen should read. Especially in light of recent current events. Today's children & teens sometimes have no real concept of how lucky they are to live in a free society.
This in such a book to remind them that things could be so different!

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is the story of the residents and staff of a mental ward, centered around the power struggle between McMurphy, the new, sane patient, and the dictatorial Big Nurse.

The novel is written in the present tense, which is often problematic, but here it works well enough. The use of Chief Bromden as the narrator is problematic at times, and the reader may find himself repeatedly skimming or skipping entire pages of mentally-unbalanced monologues. The end of the novel seems rushed, and as a result the impacts of many of the novel's climactic events are diminished.

All in all, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is an interesting read. But maybe, just maybe, the movie is better.

RECOMMENDED

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the movie, is considered one of the greatest films of all time.
The novel, by Ken Kesey, is considered an important modern novel. Not in the ranks of "The Catcher in
the Rye" or "To Kill a Mockingbird," but important none-the-less. I, personally, don't consider the novel to be very important...But it IS important, because without it...The brilliant Milos Forman directed masterpiece starring Jack Nicholson in one of his best performances would not exist. The book is told from the perspective Chief Broom, an Indian who lives in a mental asylum deceiving the staff and patients into thinking he's deaf and dumb. He has no desire to be a part of the craziness that occurs everyday in the hospital and prefers to keep to himself. He also fears that the Big Nurse (a.k.a. Nurse Ratched) and her helpers (whom he calls "the black boys") might find out his secret. Soon, Randle P. McMurphy arrives. Randle was doing time on a "work farm" for stautory rape and got sick of it and decided to act crazy with the intent of serving out the rest of his time in the hospital. He quickly begins giving Big Nurse a hard time and befriends the patients, trying to build up their self-esteem and get them to believe in themselves more. This book has the same message that every Rage Against the Machine song has "F**k the System!" Here's something you probably wouldn't expect though...The movie is much better than the book. The movie is told from a third person narrative in which R.P. McMurphy in the main character and Chief is a supporting character. We discover mid-way through the film that he's faking his deafness. It makes the film much more surprising, entertaining, and terrific. The book tends to lag, taking too much time away from the most interesting character in the novel & movie (McMurphy). The book is good and it was clearly a no-brainer casting Jack Nicholson, but if you have to pick between reading the book or watching the movie...Pick the latter.

GRADE: B

Book came on time, as promised and is in new condition as promised. I would buy from this seller anytime.

Ken Kesey set out to write his opus with this endeavor, and he can rest easy that it will go down as one of the greatest American novels ever. This masterpiece tells the tale of a prominent logging family's battle against a local union and the tragedy that comes with. The Stamper clan was not one to back down easy from a fight, whether externally or internally. The introduction of a half-brother to the clan sets events in motion. Hank Stamper understands the necessity of having another family member around but struggles to accept it. What follows may be one of the most brilliant stories ever put on paper.

This is easily the great american novel. I put it up there with Under the Volcano and Grapes of Wrath. Kesey's narrative is fluid, readable, gripping, suspenseful.

This is a very difficult book to follow. Be prepared to read the same page a couple of times to understand which character is talking. One of those literary achievements that is written as a "stream of consciousness", with few chapter breaks. I think few would care to admit that they gave up on the book after 100 pages and went on to a Leon Uris novel. I am sorry if I insult all those literary snobs out there with 720s on their verbal SATs, but this is not that good a book.

Still, One Flew... is still a classic and one of my all time favorites.

112 reviews here, all positive so far as I've read.
So there's not much more praise to be added.
But I feel compelled to cast one more vote,
just for History.
This is The Great American Novel.
Put it on the shelf next to "Life on the Mississippi,"
and re-read it just as often.