Rating: 
Summary: The World According to Everyone Involved.
Review: This is a fantastic novel. Simple as that -- and I think the key word in it is: Understand, listen. Stop and listen, stop and be humble. You will not "loose yourself" by stopping for a sec to understand another human being. For some people the quite intense and "un-structured" way that Kesey passes out the information can be chaotic or maybe just annoying. If you've read this book you have probably thanked yourself for working more than usual in the beginning of it (after that it's like riding a bike) -- if you've quit somewhere in it, then take my advice (and the other reviewers) and pick it up again and work a bit more. It is a risky thing to do like Kesey: if the reader doesn't feel like working more than usual, the book just collects dust in the shelf. But if the reader does work the reward is, I think, tremendous.This book is surely one of those few books that will stay very, very close to me for the rest of my life. I have a few already -- like Kerouac's On the road and Desolation Angels (and maybe The Dharma Bums), Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground and The Brothers Karamazov and...well, and more. But Sometimes a Great Notion is up there (not in a list, they are not ranked. They have just taken a special part in my nature, in my life). When I read it I got a feeling that said that this was the ideal novel -- it had it all. It was demanding, funny, sad, intense, warm, tragic and optimistic. There's many scenes that in theirselves are worth remembering. And it is, by the way, lovingly, and in a convincing way, anti-intelletual. Read it, I really mean it.
Rating:
Summary: Suspend your need to UNDERSTAND for 50 pages
Review: and learn to recognize the sound of each person's voice and time. You will be giving yourself a gift. This is the best American novel of the 20th century. Begin on Labor Day and try to make it last until Thanksgiving.
Rating:
Summary: Easily One of the Top Five Books I've Ever Read
Review: I first read this book in 1977, stationed in Bermuda in the US Navy. My roommate, from California, had brought his tattered copy with him. I acknowledge that the first section is sort of a challenge and I can see how it would lose some readers. I strongly urge anyone who has stopped reading it to go back and try again. There are probably a lot of people who have given up. However, being informed of the challenge of the first section should make it easier to hang in there. I picked it up again in 2000, and it was easily as enjoyable a read as the first time. Anyone who reads has an incomplete "MUST READ" list if they haven't read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Adding yet another heaping helping of praise for this book!
Review: I found this book in the constantly-cycling "take-one, leave-one" library on board the Forest Service barge in Misty Fjords National Monument (AK) while working as a volunteer for the trail crew in the summer of 1992. I'd read and loved Kesey's characters from "Cuckoo's Nest" and his point-of-view style. What a find this was! God or Allah or Whoever praise the person that left that gem for me to pick up! It must've been someone who couldn't stick with it (as can be seen in a couple of the reviews here), because I can't imagine why anyone would give up a copy of this incredible treasure! Oh, if I could only craft the language the way that this man does! Last time I finished reading it, I lay on my couch for a long moment, tears in my eyes, a knot of anguish and joy trapped in my chest, feeling completely filled and drained at the same time, and I spoke words of gratitude to the Creator for blessing the world with Ken Kesey. My brothers and I spent some of our formative years on the Oregon coast near the area that Kesey set his fictional town in. I passed the book onto two of them, for which they were eternally grateful. It belongs on every top ten list. If there is a required reading list that doesn't have this book on it, I would have to conclude that that list was composed by some high-brow fool who is seriously out of touch with the human experience. Get out of your library! Touch and be touched by the world! I look forward to passing this book on to other lovers of the language; it is a gift of the greatest magnitude!
Rating:
Summary: Best American Novel of the Twentieth Century
Review: I found myself reading the last fifty or so pages very slowly. I did not want this book to end. (The first hundred pages or so went by slowly because I did not understand the structure). In between the pages flew by. There are a few must read American novels. Catcher in the Rye, Angle of Repose, Grapes of Wrath, all come to mind. This one, unfortunately, does not. It should. The structure of the book (switching points of view) and plot and the development of the characters was amazing. Buy this book. Stick with it and you will love it. I can't wait to read it again. --Joe
Rating: 
Summary: Too difficult to get into
Review: This book was recommended to me after I had traveled the Oregon coast, and I was anxious to read the book which so many have termed "the great American novel." However, I could just not get into the story. Following the point of view is a challenge, to say the least. I couldn't keep track of who was thinking, talking or where we were in the time frame of the story. I am not a reader who likes fluffy kinds of stories, but this one was too much. So disorganized and barely lucid. I also found that after 100 pages, there wasn't one character in the book that I liked, or cared about--that is, if I could figure out who was who. I gave up at page 100. Maybe the idea for the story was a great notion, but I couldn't follow it. I am amazed at all of the people who found this book so great--being that is it so extremely difficult to read.
Rating:
Summary: "Sometimes a Great Notion"
Review: You can stop searching for the Great American Novel. Thirty years ago Ken Kesey's wrote "Sometimes a Great Notion". The reader is immediately caught up in a narrative that covers fifty years of a family's history, with a story line that switches from past to present throughout the novel. Gripping as the narrative is, with an impending sense of doom that grabs the reader right from the first pages, it is only after the end of the novel that the reader can fully grasp Kesey's genius. Don't miss it.
Rating:
Summary: The Overlooked Great American Novel
Review: Better than both the movie based on the book (Never Give an Inch) and the author's better known work (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), this book immediately embraces the reader and defines, through tight plot and dead-on character portrayal, what is great and unique about the American spirit. I strongly recommend this book to everyone!
Rating:
Summary: Kesey - ALWAYS a great notion!
Review: This is the first Kesey novel I read after "Cuckoo's Nest" and the one which made me a hardcore Kesey fan. This book is details a manly logger family, along with the less hearty stepson. The way the character interact, respond to the outside world and live their lives speaks to the 20th/21st century world. The reader cannot help but identify with a character's personality and background. This book takes personalities to extreme and the reader enjoys the ride and the read.
Rating:
Summary: The best
Review: This is the best book I have ever read. Period. I have read it every three years for 20 years now and enjoy it just as much every time.
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