Journal Entry 1 by augustusgloop from Sydney, New South Wales Australia on Wednesday, May 11, 2005

From Amazon.com -
"We've all got our idiosyncrasies when it comes to writing--a special chair we have to sit in, a certain kind of yellow paper we absolutely must use.

To create this tremendously affecting memoir, Jean-Dominique Bauby used the only tool available to him--his left eye--with which he blinked out its short chapters, letter by letter.

Two years ago, Bauby, then the 43-year-old editor-in-chief of Elle France, suffered a rare stroke to the brain stem; only his left eye and brain escaped damage. Rather than accept his "locked in" situation as a kind of death, Bauby ignited a fire of the imagination under himself and lived his last days--he died two days after the French publication of this slim volume--spiritually unfettered.

In these pages Bauby journeys to exotic places he has and has not been, serving himself delectable gourmet meals along the way (surprise: everything's ripe and nothing burns). In the simplest of terms he describes how it feels to see reflected in a window "the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde."" 

Journal Entry 2 by augustusgloop from Sydney, New South Wales Australia on Wednesday, May 11, 2005

I've read this on a bookring before. To repeat my previous thoughts:

I found myself picturing him, as he describes, painstakingly composing whole pages in his head ready for "wink"-tation. Definitely puts things in perspective and makes you appreciate the wonder of a 'working' body.

The sentence I found most sobering was 'In the past it was known as a "massive stroke", and you simply died. But improved resuscitation techniques have now prolonged and refined the agony"...

Recommended.