Teaser Tuesday 10/4/11

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

The following teaser is from Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I've had the urge to reread this oldie, but goodie, for awhile now, so I finally pulled it out. Maybe it's because I've been loosely planning a trip back home to visit family in Oregon, where this was set. I have no idea, but I love the way he words things. From page 16:

"Nobody can tell exactly why he laughs; there's nothing funny going on. But it's not the way that Public Relation laughs, it's free and loud and it comes out of his wide grinning mouth and spreads in rings bigger and bigger until it's lapping against the walls all over the ward."

From the back:

In this classic novel of the 1960's, Ken Kesey's hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Big Nurse. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Big Nurse, backed by the full power of authority...McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens when Big Nurse uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the story's shocking climax.

If you haven't read this book yet, I highly recommend you do. Kesey's writing is phenomenal, and the story is powerful. Don't assume that if you've seen the movie you know all about it. His writing makes this an easy read, though the subject matter can make it a rough one.

However, for those of you who have seen the movie, I used to live in Salem, Oregon and pass that duck crossing sign on a regular basis. I fully intend to get a pic of it this time through, if I can make it out to Oregon for vacation next summer. Of course, when I lived there I was far too young to know the sign was famous. Thus, the lack of a photo up to this point.

Do you have a book or books that you return to again and again? What brings you back to it? Anyone read any of Kesey's other works? Would you recommend them?

May you find your Muse.