A Book a Week – East of Eden

East of Eden was May’s book for one of my book clubs. I had never read it before. Actually, I’d never read a Steinbeck book before. When I first moved to California, I attempted to read Grapes of Wrath but the accents in the book made it really hard for me so I put it down.

I’ll admit that I didn’t think I was going to make it through this very large book. But I did. I got the unabridged audio version and alternated between listening while I crafted and reading when I didn’t. I thought it might be hard to transition between reading and listening but it wasn’t hard at all. The audio version was read by the same person who read the recent Feynman book I listened to so it was a great reading (though it felt like Richard Feynman was reading the book to me.) And it took quite a while to finish it but I really did enjoy every single moment.

It reminded me a bit of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and One Hundred Years of Solitude in that there were several generations of characters and a long epic story. I enjoyed that book a lot, too. This is one of the reasons I wanted to join a book club, so I can be encouraged to read things I know I’d like.