The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and grab it from your local bookstore. If you have read it, I suggest reading it again - like a great movie, it's better the second time around. The Diving Bell and The Butterfly is a memoir documenting Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of French Elle (1995), after he suffered a massive stroke that left him a victim of "locked-in syndrome". Bauby can only communicate with a system that he says is "simple enough". It goes something like this:

"You read off the alphabet (ESA version, not ABC) until, with a blink of my eye, I stop you at the letter to be noted. The maneuver is repeated for the letters that follow, so that fairly soon you have a whole word, and then fragments of more or less intelligible sentences." 

And in doing just that he composed this entire memoir. The fact that this man, only 43 years old and with two young children, can only communicate by blinking his left eye and not losing hope in the world is incredibly inspiring. The range of emotions that run through you as you quickly read the pages are constantly changing with Bauby's own. He always seems to bring a smile back to the surface and to remind you that he was once a stylish man.

"Having turned down the hideous jogging suit provided by the hospital, I am now attired as I was in my student days. Like the bath, my old clothes could easily bring back poignant, painful memories. But I see the clothing as a symbol of continuing life. And proof that I still want to be myself. If I must drool, I may as well drool on cashmere."

So if this doesn't make you want to immediately go buy this book, I'm not sure what will - maybe Twilight would suite you better.