Tag Archives: John Steinbeck

5 Books You Should Buy Too

My amazon.com cart is very seldom empty. I am constantly adding books to it, removing them, adding them back, adding some more until I get just the right ratio of books-per-dollar-amount. Then, when I have the perfect mix of books, I let it simmer for a while. There is a thought that adds a delay to the time I get the books in the cart just right to the moment I press “Proceed to Checkout” and that thought is (as I look over my unread pile of books): “I really should finish these ones first.” 

However! I am now on the very verge of pressing that all important button, and here are the five books that will be taking a trip across the Atlantic and into my bookshelves once I do.

1. Roadside Picnic, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Roadside Picnic cover

I first heard of this book at BookRiot, in the Best Books of January post us contributors made. Here is what fellow BookRiot contributor Scott Beauchamp had to say about it:

“The story involves people living in the strange aftermath of an alien visitation that no one can quite comprehend. The area where their crafts landed has become an off-limits zone which dangerously defies the rules of rational cause and effect and physics as we understand it. The only people allowed to enter the zone are scientists – but a criminal black market group of guides known as Stalkers are willing to lead you in (or get stuff out for you) for a price. This isn’t just the best book I read this month, it’s one of the best SF books I’ve ever read.”

2. Heart for the Ravens, Colin F Barnes

Heart for the RavensThis is a book by Colin F Barnes, who is head of Anachron Press, one of the more interesting and ambitious independent publishers out there, though this book is being published by Fox Spirit Books. It is described as a gothic horror novella in the tradition of Poe. The reviews are mostly positive and the main complaint is that it is too short (probably a compliment in disguise). Also, great cover.

3. East of Eden, John Steinbeck

I recently read Grapes of Wrath, and was blown away by it. It is definitely one of the best books I have ever read, a classic deserving of a place with Dickens’ Great Expectations and Garcia’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. I also read Of Mice and Men a while back and was no less impressed. Steinbeck is good. People who think otherwise are simply wrong. East of Eden is simply the logical next book to read.

4. Hell House, Richard Matheson

Hell HouseThere is a book called I am Legend, written by Richard Matheson. There are few excuses for not having read it, none of them good. I am Legend is the polar opposite of Twilight; the world ended, and the few humans that didn’t die were turned into vampires.  A single human, at least as far as the reader knows, survives and spends his days killing vampires. He is a drunk and totally unlike-able and awesome. I love this book, and have reason to assume that Mr. Matheson writes good books. There is also this:

“Hell House is the scariest haunted house novel ever written. It looms over the rest the way the mountains loom over the foothills.” –Stephen King

So yeah, I’m buying Hell House.

5 Give us a Kiss, Daniel Woodrell

Give Us a Kiss coverDaniel Woodrell is a genius and each and every last one of you should buy all his books now. Seriously though, Woodrell is a really good writer, and for some reason he remains not famous. Give us a Kiss is one of the last of his books I haven’t read. He has yet to disappoint, and judging from the reviews the book gets, i am confident this one will not disappoint either.

But don’t take it just from me, let this one-star review drive the point home:

I have read 3 other Daniel Woodrell novels, and found them very good, although somewhat violent. this one is not only violent, but vulgar too.

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The Best Books I Read in 2012

I realize now that I have a book problem. Well, maybe it’s not a problem so much as an issue of sorts. But before we get into that, let me tell you about the best books I read this year. I recently selected the The Twelve as my best book of 2012, but for that list I was bound by publication date. Not so now.

In no particular order, here are the five best books I read this year.


The Reapers are the Angels, Alden Bell

The-Reapers-Are-the-AngelsThis zombie-apocalypse story by Alden Bell is beautiful and horrifying at the same time. It is the book I read the fastest this year, and the one I recommended most to friends. The main character is one of those “strong female types” you hear so much about these days, a girl called Temple who makes her way through the southern United States as the story progresses. Great read, especially if you like well-written zombie books.

The Death of Sweet Mister, Daniel Woodrell

DeathofSweetDaniel Woodrell is a writer I get tired of recommending to people because, if there was any justice in this world, he would be outselling Shades of Gray. You will probably have heard of Winter’s Bone though, as you should. The Death of Sweet Mister is, like Winter’s Bone, about unfortunate people. Shug is a boy who lives with a too-sexy-for-her-own-good mother and a violent man called Red that may or may not be his father. While Red is away avoiding the law, Glenda takes up with another man, and this has consequences for everyone. If you like good books, the sort of good that makes you mad at the world for handing you the book sooner, this is for you.

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

grapes-of-wrathThe single best thing I read this year, no contest. There is a reason Steinbeck won a Nobel prize, and it is on display in this epic. I almost can not imagine any American not reading this, since it says so much about the nation’s history. The story of the Joad’s trek to California during the depression puts a human element on the places and the dates learned during history class. It may seem a little like socialist propaganda at times, but I’m not entirely sure that the U.S. couldn’t use a little of that now (but that’s a totally different discussion). Read it, even if only for the chapter on how why their land gets taken away.

Trust Me, I’m Lying, Ryan Holiday

trustmeimlyingThe only non-fiction book to make the list (and, bonus, a book actually published in 2012), Trust Me, I’m Lying is about how news becomes news, why we should know this and what to do about it. Or, if you are so inclined, how to manipulate the media to cover the stories you want. Remember when almost all the media channels said the presidential race was too close to call, and that it could go either way? Yeah, they knew Obama was probably going to win but didn’t cover that because that doesn’t keep viewers glued to screens. This book will change the way you view the media. Trust me, I’m telling the truth now.

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

20121117-100431.jpgDickens is my favorite writer. I’m working my way through his books one by one (they tend to be large in both pages and scope) and this was my Dickens read of the year, though I will be reading A Christmas Carol when we get closer to Christmas. A Tale of Two Cities takes place during the French revolution and tells the story of lovers in London who are drawn back to Paris as the Revolution brings forth the guillotine and heads roll, literally. It was a source of inspiration for this year’s summer blockbuster with the man in the bat-suit, according to Nolan himself. It is good, though not as good as Bleak House or Great Expectations.

And then, my book problem. You see, I tend to buy books that have passed a test-of-time, so to speak. If a book gets a lot of hype upon publication and then keeps popping up (Gone Girl is a perfect example of this) I’m going to read it. However, I tend to forego new books for these which means that I’m usually reading the classics, or books around the three-year-old mark.

Buy the books on Amazon by clicking on their images below:

The Reapers are the AngelsThe Death of Sweet MisterThe Grapes of WrathTrust Me, I'm LyingA Tale of Two Cities

What’s the best thing you read this year?

Friday review: The Grapes of Wrath

I just finished it. One of the finest books of the last century.

I’m still in a sort of muted shock. The last time I felt this way was when I finished Beloved. It is a book that has something to say and is right to be saying it.

The Grapes of Wrath, published way back in 1939, tells the story of the Joad family as their farm in Oklahoma fails during the depression era and they are forced to move west to search for work. Steinbeck writes very well (he won the Nobel Prize in 1962) and The Grapes of Wrath won the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. The narrative switches between the Joad family and chapters where a certain setting or state is described in detail. A chapter early on where Steinbeck describes how it’s not the man driving the tractor who is going to wreck the Joad’s house, it’s the bank but the Joads shouldn’t get mad at the tractor-man and not at the bank cause the bank doesn’t know and doesn’t care. I surely am not doing it justice, but it is one of the best things I’ve read all year.

The reader feels the Joad’s pain and hunger and desperation as the family falls apart, through death or because people simply leave. The main character, Tom Joad, is just out of prison and on parole so even by just leaving Oklahoma he is breaking the law and all his actions later in the book are influenced by this.

Near the end of the story Tom has been hiding after killing a man but feels he has to leave. He tells his mother and she worries that she’ll never see him again and he tells her:

Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there … I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready.

This started Rage Against the Machine’s cover of Bruce Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad playing in my head and gave me goosebumps. The lyrics don’t match the book but are pretty close:

Now Tom said “Mom, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there’s a fight ‘gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I’ll be there
Wherever there’s somebody fightin’ for a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin’ hand
Wherever somebody’s strugglin’ to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you’ll see me.”

The Grapes of Wrath says so much about class struggle and human decency that I simply can’t do it justice. I feel overwhelmed by the books sheer quality.

It is one of those books that everyone should read. When it came out it was burned and banned, certainly a sign of quality.

And the thing about great enduring works of art is that they enter the culture, inspire more art. And The Grapes of Wrath certainly do that, as the  Bruce Springsteen song shows, as do the movie and stage versions of the book. I myself use language from the first chapter of the book in my current writing, do describe the heat and dust of the setting my novel takes place in.

The Grapes of Wrath is a five-star book, this should be clear to anyone who reads it, whether they like the book or not. There is a certain enduring quality to five star books like Grapes of Wrath, Beloved, Great Expectations and others that comes through as you read.

I leave you now, with the video to Rage Against the Machine’s cover of Springsteen’s Ghost of Tom Joad.

The best writing of the week goes to…

I’m currently reading three books (I tend to read more than one, it’s a filthy habit, I know) and one of them is The Grapes of Wrath.

I think it may be unfair to the other two, since the writing is so sublime and the political commentary and the characters are timeless and near perfect. This truly is one of the finest books I have read, and I haven’t even finished.

It splits between the story of the Joad family and descriptions of how American society is changing as a result of the Great Depression. I’ve heard from readers who skip the descriptions and just read the story but I think they are losing out. Take the following passage for example, where Steinbeck talks about the farms in California, and how the society of the West became capitalist. This passage is the finest writing I read all week.

The Grapes of Wrath

“Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer little deaths within life, but simple losses of money. And all their love was thinned with money, and all their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer farmers at all, but little shopkeepers of crops, little manufacturers who must sell before they can make. Then those farmers who were not good shopkeepers lost their land to the good shopkeepers. No matter how clever, how loving a man might be with earth and growing things, he could not survive if he were not also a good shopkeeper. And as time went on, the business men had the farms, and the farms grew larger, but there were fewer of them.
Now farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although they did not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. They live on rice and beans, the business men said. They don’t need much, they wouldn’t know what to do with good wages. Why, look how they live. Why, look what they eat. And if they get funny – deport them.”

If you do not own it, I strongly suggest you buy The Grapes of Wrath.

But don’t take my word for it, let this one-star review of the book really drive the point home:

The book had very little plot. Yes it was descriptive,but I didn’t learn anything new in the book. It went on and on and on. The intercalary chapters were the worst part of the book. They told me nothing. At times it put me to sleep. I feel it has made me dumber for having read it.

This is the exact opposite of my view of what is a great example of a five-star book.

When preparing to write the novel, Steinbeck wrote: “I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects].” (From Wikipedia)

Now… please tell me what the best thing you read recently is, and what you think of the Grapes of Wrath.

Beautiful Book Beginnings

I love it when books start off by caressing your reading muscles.

Some books just start off feeling right, like you have slipped into a warm bath. Here are three examples (feel free to disagree, that’s what the comments are for).

The first one is from John Steinbeck’s epic The Grapes of Wrath. I new right from the first words that I was in for something special, and so far I have been blown away by the quality of Steinbeck’s writing. Here is the first paragraph, about the weather, not normally a subject I would think books would be able to start with and keep the reader’s attention.

The Grapes of Wrath

To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that they gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country.

The next two are from my favorite “literary” writer, Michael Ondaatje. The first is from the English Patient, a book I try to read every year and always find something new to admire. The second paragraph is from my second-favorite of his books, Anil’s Ghost, probably an easier book for those new to Ondaatje’s prose.

The English Patient

She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed a shift in the weather. There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air, and the tall cypresses sway. She turns and moves uphill towards the house, climbing over a low wall, feeling the first drops of rain on her bare arms. She crosses the loggia and quickly enters the house.

In the kitchen she doesn’t pause but goes through it and climbs the stairs which are in darkness and then continues along the long hall, at the end of which is a wedge of light from an open door.

She turns into the room which is another garden – this one made up of trees and bowers painted over its walls and ceiling. The man lies on the bed, his body exposed to the breeze, and he turns his head slowly towards her as she enters.

Anil’s Ghost

When the team reached the site at five-thirty in the morning, one or two family members would be waiting for them. And they would be present all day while Anil and the others worked, never leaving; they spelled each other so someone always stayed, as if to ensure that the evidence would not be lost again. This vigil for the dead, for those half-revealed forms.

During the night, plastic sheet covered the site, weighted down with some stones or pieces of iron. The families knew the approximate hour the scientists would arrive. They removed the sheetning and got closer to the submerged bones until they heard the whine of the four-wheel drive in the distance. One morning Anil found a footprint in the mud. Another day a petal.

The English Patient is actually half of what propels me as a writer.

The first, and perhaps more important, is that I remember reading a book of short stories that was really good overall. But one of the stories was so bad that I thought “Hey, I can do better than this, and this shit got published.” And so I started.

Oh, and The English Patient? Yeah…. I want to write like that. It’s like I’m running. The starting line was the awful short story, the little gun that said “Go!”. And the finish line, for me, is and will always be Ondaatje’s The English Patient.

The World’s Best Novellas

The novella is the bastard child of the book world.

Novellas the hushed-up offspring of novelist’s one-night stands with typewriters. They are the awkward middle-child.

Novellas are not long enough to be allowed into the novel club, and yet too long to be read in a single sitting. In paperback, they look flimsy and short and really not worth buying (“Look at that big hardcover over there, for half the price!”)

Stephen King calls the novella ”an ill-defined and disreputable literary banana republic.”, and it is the form that suits him best.

I tend to agree with Robert Silverberg though.

“[The novella] is one of the richest and most rewarding of literary forms…it allows for more extended development of theme and character than does the short story, without making the elaborate structural demands of the full-length book. Thus it provides an intense, detailed exploration of its subject, providing to some degree both the concentrated focus of the short story and the broad scope of the novel.”

Now, as promised, I present:

The World’s Best Novellas

1. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

Written by Charles Dickens way back in 1843, A Christmas Carol is one of his better-known works. Lets get one thing straight: when you write a book that influences and changes the way a culture celebrates a holiday, you did something right.

“It has been credited with restoring the holiday to one of merriment and festivity in Britain and America after a period of sobriety and sombreness. A Christmas Carol remains popular, has never been out of print, and has been adapted to film, stage, opera, and other media.”

The phrase “Merry Christmas” is used world-over and the name “Scrooge” and exclamation “Bah! Humbug!” have entered the English language, all thanks to Dickens’s novella.

One of the best parts of the book are right at the start, when Dickens describes Scrooge, and may very well be my favorite of all character descriptions:

“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin.”

2. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness

This is one of my favorite pieces of writing, if merely for the tone and the description. There is an introduction in the version I have (a snobbish Everyman’s Edition) that says what I feel about the book better than I could.

“In Heart of Darkness, the impression Conrad creates seems to have slipped the mold of his sentences and to have grown more enveloping, more ominous than perhaps even he imagined. It is a book of extraordinary intensity, so much so that, returning to it after a time, you’re surprised to discover that what it most resembles is a nightmare – a momentary nocturnal vision that transforms the ordinary light of day.“

From the book itself, a description of the Thames unlike any other.

Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of the day, after ages of good service to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth.

3. The Old Man and The Sea, Ernest Hemingway

When you write a novella that wins a Pulitzer, and the following year you win the Nobel Prize for literature, you know you are doing something right. The story tells of an old fisherman who has not caught a single fish in a long time. He then goes out and catches a fish so big he has trouble with it. That is basically the story (except told beautifully) and it is a pleasure to read. The success of The Old Man and the Sea made Hemingway an international celebrity, and shut up the critics that said his writing career was over.

Hemingway’s style is so unique (though much copied, myself included), that if I was handed a Hemingway passage I could identify it in three sentences. Example:

He could not see the green of the shore now but only the tops of the blue hills that showed white as though they were snow-capped and the clouds that looked like high snow mountains above them. The sea was very dark and the light made prisms in the water. The myriad flecks of the plankton were annulled now by the high sun and it was only the great deep prisms in the blue water that the old man saw now with his lines going straight down into water that was a mile deep.

Though, in the example above, the Hemingway-ness shines through in every sentence so I could have guessed it in one.

Some critics claim to see the book as religious allegory. I choose to see it as a fuckin’ fine piece of writing.

4. Metamorphosis, Franz KafkaMetamorphosis

I’m not a real fan of Kafka. I found the Trial to be confusing, and after a while the satire got really old. I know, it’s really angsty and “bureaucracy sucks man!” and everything, but still. Nothing about the prose got me and the protagonist was uninteresting. It’s a boring book, and overrated.

Not so with Metamorphosis. It is an excellent little insect of a book, that starts off strong and keeps the reader turning those pages. Unlike the Trial, the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, somehow earned my sympathy. He finds himself in a situation that has somehow been thrust upon him but his main concern is getting to work.

When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous cockroach in his bed. He lay on his tough, armoured back, and, raising his head a little, managed to see – sectioned off by little crescent-shaped ridges into segments – the expanse of his arched, brown belly, atop which the coverlet perched, forever on the point of slipping off entirely. His numerous legs, pathetically frail by contrast to the rest of him, waved feebly before his eyes.

5. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck

This is an excellent introduction to Steinbeck’s writing, and I recommend it before you pick up a copy of his epic, Grapes of Wrath (which is so good, by the way, that I plan to actually eat the copy I am reading now). It is one of the finest things I have ever read and an excellent showcase of how to write characters and dialogue that the reader remembers. Of Mice and Men is perhaps the perfect example of the strength of the novella. It would not work as a short story, it is far too long for that, but it’s narrative would become overly complicated if Steinbeck had tried to stretch it into a novel.

It’s appearance on the American Library Association’s list of the Most Challenged Books of 21st Century only serves to act as further recommendation.

6. Animal Farm, George Orwell

George Orwell’s 1984 is my favorite book of all time, of all books. Animal Farm is just Orwell showing off his great talent to the rest of us. It appeals to everyone, children and older readers alike, and while The Old Man and The Sea and Heart of Darkness feel three times as long as they really are, Animal Farm feels three times shorter. We now turn to Wikipedia for enlightenment:

The novel (sic) addresses not only the corruption of the revolution by its leaders but also how wickedness, indifference, ignorance, greed and myopia corrupt the revolution. It portrays corrupt leadership as the flaw in revolution, rather than the act of revolution itself. It also shows how potential ignorance and indifference to problems within a revolution could allow horrors to happen if a smooth transition to a people’s government is not achieved.

Never, in polite company at least, admit that you have not read Animal Farm. Never.

7. I am Legend, Richard MathesonI am Legend

Yeah! I am Legend is an awesome story of the vampire apocalypse, and the only survivor is a surly human with a drinking problem. He drives around in the daylight and kills blood-suckers, and spends his nights inside his house, listening to them outside, calling to him.

I often use the books first paragraph as an example of how to hook readers:

“On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back.

If he had been more analytical, he might have calculated the approximate time of their arrival; but he still used the lifetime habit of judging nightfall by the sky, and on the cloudy days that method didn’t work. That was why he chose to stay near the house on those days.”

It also has an ending that makes other endings seem anemic (pun intended), but showing it here would ruin it. Just buy the book.

Ignore the movie.

8. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Stephen King

On this account however, you really should watch the movie. The Shawshank Redemption is by many considered to be one of the best films of all time. The novella is one of King’s finest works, along with The Shining and Misery. It is easy to read and the best thing about King novellas is that they don’t contain that tiresome rambling that King tends to include in his longer works. Has anyone ever managed to read The Tommyknockers, by the way? Didn’t think so.

What you should do, however, is go for a King four-in-one novella extravaganza called Different Seasons. It includes Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, The Body (made into the classic movie Stand By Me), Apt Pupil (also made into a movie) and Breathing Lessons. Novellas as a form somehow force the overly word-happy King into a box where he is at his best.

Now. What did I miss?