Uomini e topi

The famous Mark Twain quote "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one" is now considered to be a misattribution, that Twain never said.

Nonetheless, whoever did say it - this book made me think of it. Truly it takes skill, craft, and artistry to write well and also be succinct.

This book feels perfect not because there's nothing else to add, but because there's nothing else to take away.

This book captured my imagination in 120 pages. And now it will stay with me for a while.

Okay, so this book was a two-sided coin:

First, I thought that it had some of the best writing I've seen. Really excellent characterization, foreshadowing, and plot development. It's also pretty short; I read it in 1-2 hours.

On the other hand, it's got one of the saddest endings I've ever seen. Read at your own risk.

Overall, I thought it was very worth the read.

Yet anther example of a book off the 1001 list that I probably would not have gotten to otherwise. That's not to say it shouldn't be a classic, or that it isn't really well written. It was just too straight forward depressing. There wasn't a whole lot of things to remember, or a lot of world building details to gawk at.

Of Mice and Men is a story about two fairly average guys, in a pretty nondescript setting, slowly being ground down by life as life is apt to do. So despite the fact that this simplicity makes the book that much more powerful and timeless, it just wasn't an engaging read for me.

I am glad I read it though, and I think my life will probably be richer for it. Not only because it gets referenced all the time, but also because it strikes me as being one of those stories that becomes more meaningful the longer you have to think about it. Even now, barely 24 hours after I finished it, I am enjoying having read that story more now then I did initially.

This book is going straight back on my reread pile.

Reading this classic as an adult reminds me of one of the reasons why it's hard to be somebody other than an able-bodied white cishet man in this goddamned culture. I was raised on these toxic stories, taught to appreciate them because Steinbeck describes freakin scenery prettily, while Curly's wife doesn't apparently deserve a damned name, and Lennie gets shot literally like a dog.