[18] East of Eden

I don't really think of myself as much of a reader of the classics. So many of them are just so boring. I don't do boring books, which is why I don't read much non-fiction, unless it is a memoir.

(L. and I were talking about fiction the other night, and how narrative is a different kind of truth, if you don't make the mistake of thinking that truth = facts. (It doesn't. In this age of science, we would like the two to be the same, but they aren't.))

(I borrowed The Poisoner's Handbook from my boss probably close to a year ago, and I can't get into it. I want to get into it, badly, because what is more bad-ass than sitting in a coffee shop reading a book called The Poisoner's Handbook? 

But, alas, it's not working.)

The classics, though. I generally write them off, but then there are the ones that I love. Jane Austen. The Brontes. Dracula. 

Middlemarch got wearisome.

I put East of Eden on hold at the library a while ago, after reading a quote from it online somewhere, and I renewed it three times without reading it.

Then it sat on my bathroom counter for almost a week, open to one of the first pages. I just couldn't get started, not when I had the next in the Temeraire series to read.

I read Grapes of Wrath years ago, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with Steinbeck. At least, I think I read Grapes of Wrath. I remember the movie more clearly than the book, which may not be saying much for my AP English class. But I remember conversations about the book, so we must have read it. (Isn't it odd how reading something for a class makes it inherently less interesting, even if you would have liked it absent the assignment?)

This is a very long and tedious way of saying that I finally got into East of Eden, and it's good. Go read it, if you are looking for a book to read.