East Of Eden by John Steinbeck
(Format used for this read: Print–paperback)
Last month at my book club, we were discussing what this month’s pick would be.
Here is our how our truly refined selection process usually goes (the word “refined” should be read with TONS of sarcasm here🤣) :
First, someone suggests a book they are interested in and have been wanting to read, usually with a fun and lengthy commentary on how they heard about it or why they wanna read it.
Then we see if anyone has read the title yet…..which is tough because we have serious book worms in our group that read A LOT and OFTEN (are you surprised I am one of them???)…to find a title NONE of us have read yet is NOT an easy task.
Someone else looks the title up on their phone and reads the plot summary, maybe also adding in some reviews we come across. (Or mentioning famous people who have read and recommended it because I mean…THAT is important right?!?)
Someone else opens up their library app and checks to see if our library has copies available in print…. some of us prefer to borrow when we can AND we like to turn actual pages and not finger swipe to the next.
Someone else opens up their library app (and/or Audible app) and checks to see if our library ALSO has copies available in audio/e-book….. some of us also prefer to borrow when we can AND we like the accessibility of e-readers and the ease of audio when on the go.
Someone else looks the book up on Amazon to see how much the book costs……some of us prefer to have our very own copy in our hands….and also because some of us are book hoarders. LOL🙋♀️
THEN…. we discuss ALLLLL the things….usually loudly…. and usually leading to multiple conversations happening at once.
This step goes on the longest….Because at this point of the evening a good deal of wine or other assorted adult beverages have been drank🤣
And then amidst all our crazy rambling, someone suggests another title…
and the whole entire process starts over….and continues until we finally arrive at some kind of decision.
You can imagine that this often takes quite a bit of time 🤣
Sometimes I wonder how we ever really make a definitive choice each month…
But the process is a BLAST!
Every now and then we all agree immediately on the first choice suggested…it’s rare like a flying rainbow unicorn… but it DOES HAPPEN (it actually happened LAST NIGHT😱)…
but I feel like when that happens its not NEARLY as fun 🤣
So while we were chatting last month and realized many of the suggestions mentioned so far weren’t readily available, someone suggested we read an older book….like a classic novel of some sort.
One group member said her uncle gave her a Steinbeck novel for Christmas and has been after her to read it ever since…..she hadn’t been motivated yet to dig into it on her own. (she is mother to two toddler boys and this book is HELLA LONG, yall…)
We read the summary and did our whole shebang of selection….
and tada…our pick for July was “East of Eden”.
And let me tell yall what….
I never would have picked this thing up on my own.
Another thing I love about being in this book club….reading things out of my typical interests and genre.
Sometimes I read something I absolutely love and enjoy that I NEVER would have discovered otherwise.
UMMMMM……
That did NOT happen with this book.
Before I get all up in my thoughts about it, here is the official summary:
“In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
The masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love’s absence. Adapted for the 1955 film directed by Elia Kazan introducing James Dean and read by thousands as the book that brought Oprah’s Book Club back, East of Eden has remained vitally present in American culture for over half a century.”
I did not enjoy this book, yall.
I REALLLLLLY tried to…I really did.
I tried SO HARD to get into the story but it just would NOT attach to me.
I said above it was LONG….and it FELT long. I felt each and every one of those 602 painstaking pages IN MY DANG BONES, people.
Some books are long and you get so into them that you don’t really notice….but dannnngggggg…. I NOTICED.
Especially because I did not start reading this until a little over a week before our monthly meeting.
So I had like 9 days to read those 602 pages 😬
You aren’t allowed to come to our book club meetings unless you finish the book…that is our first and only rule….we take this quite serious because we want in depth discussion about what we read….we ain’t no social club…we are a BOOK CLUB, yall…and now you understand why the name of our group is “Read The Damn Book club”😂
Not finishing this thing was NOT an option for me because I LIVE for my book club meetings and I did NOT WANT TO MISS OUT!
I will not diminish the amazing literary creativity that John Steinbeck possessed…his work is beautiful and his writing is exquisite.
But this novel was not it for me.
I feel like the pace just draaaaagggggggged.
One of the concepts of the story is the theory of good and evil…. Are we born being predisposed to one or the other? If so, is it possible to overcome? If not, what happens to a person to make them choose one or the other?
There was a lot of evil in this book….one of the main characters is a straight up sociopath for SURE and I did NOT like reading about all the harmful deeds and actions against others….
But there was also a lot of good as well.
And even grace and redemption and love.
But mostly a lot of messed up junk happens. Some of it is REALLY awful and horrible too. I wasn’t in the mood for that nonsense.
This novel has much to do with family relationships …how the love you find with family members (or DON’T find with them) can shape you, define you or even destroy you.
Usually I enjoy this type of story very much…but this one was NOT FOR ME.
Something I REALLY disliked about this book was there were many racist terms used by the white characters….”injuns”, “ChingChong”, “Orientals”, “wop”….and there was even a minor character only identified as “the Nigger.”
Nope. Nope. Nope.
I know some people would say he just used those words to go along “with the times” he was writing about (preWW1 era) but that doesn’t fly with me.
Not necessary in my opinion AT ALL.
Wasn’t okay then….isn’t okay now.
I just didn’t like this book….I don’t have many more thoughts than that🤷♀️
Also I am glad that our next book club pick is 200 pages shorter than this one 😉
That’s it for me for this pick, yall.