East of Eden

Since I don't have much time for reading, this one has taken me a couple weeks to get through. I really enjoyed the book (thanks to ben's mom for the recommendation :-)). And I actually didn't think it was depressing, just true. However, it's one of those books that really made me want more...as in digging up some good literary criticism and slowly going over it again. Picking at it to see if there's a way of getting inside.

It's made me realize (again) just how much I miss the resources we had at PHC. Trying to find some criticism on it through our library that isn't in the reference section (I don't much like reading in the library) has been an adventure. I finally got a biography and placed requests for a couple of interlibrary loans. But I was really longing to get on J-stor and print things out to my heart's content, like we could in school.

Anyway...other than the fact that I really enjoyed it, I'm not quite sure what to think of EofE. There are several parts I want to re-read and think about. It's a book that I really wished I owned instead of getting it from the library, because I guarantee that if I owned it it would be packed full of notes and underlines. As it is, I just had to use those little sticky arrows to mark pages that need re-reading and this means I miss a lot of things and it makes it very hard to hold onto your thoughts about certain passages. At least for me--but then, I have a hard time remembering anything unless I write it down. :-)

There was one short chapter in particular that really caught my attention because it seemed to be saying something very familiar. I think something from C.S. Lewis I read recently--I need to look that up.

I guess if I were to summarize what I'm thinking about EofE, I would say that I was amazed by how much universal truth it contained--hard ugly truths, truths of an incredible sharp beauty, the truth of the ever-unfolding story of mankind's flawed generations.