You know, this is always ticketed as inspirational, and the movie was atrocious, but I did like the book.

I don’t find it to be that much of a “tribute to the resilience of the human spirit” or whathaveyou.

The author was certainly much more likeable in this version versus the film (in which Julian Schnabel put too much of himself, and he is an utter ass, and added in a few bits of Hollywood sizzle with love interests that never existed and the bizarre bit about the guy who got abducted because Jean-Do gave him his seat on the plane, ignored the fact that he could move his head as well, not just his eye).

The thought/emotion that it primarily evoked in me is something more along the lines of, no matter what, life goes on – his emotions did not seem to change extremely, the things that caused him pleasure and pain, his thoughts remained among the same lines, the things he reminisced on seemed not a sea change from how life was when he was not the living dead. I did not sense a “oh I am just so happy to still be alive” sentiment at all, but a recognition of how things are – pain, pleasure, frustration, fun, sorrow. It read to me like thoughts on life, not specifically the wailings of an invalid, which is all the more a beautiful thing.