Welcome to Litsy!

Repost for @BarkingMadRead
Ok #hashtagbrigade here is November‘s book! If you want to join us for a chapter a day, drop a comment below. But remember, my hashtags are often ridiculous and always chapter spoilers, so read the chapter before you read my post each day! Everyone is welcome! I have two groups of tags, one for the individual book, and one for monthly reminder list, so be sure to let me know if you need to be on one of my lists!

Ok #hashtagbrigade here is November‘s book! If you want to join us for a chapter a day, drop a comment below. But remember, my hashtags are often ridiculous and always chapter spoilers, so read the chapter before you read my post each day! Everyone is welcome! I have two groups of tags, one for the individual book, and one for monthly reminder list, so be sure to let me know if you need to be on one of my lists!

Not my fave Steinbeck but I learned a lot and it was good.

Happy Tuesday! Here are today's #Two4Tuesday questions. Thanks to everyone who played last week. Everyone is welcome to play.

My answers:
📘 Yes. There is power in the written word.
📘 Tagged. One of the best books that captures the Great Depression.

Play? @Eggs @dabbe @peaKnit @Susanita @julesG @TheBookHippie @Cupcake12 @DebinHawaii @Texreader @lil1inblue @AnnCrystal @Kshakal

#poetrymatters
#vintage
@TheSpineView

This.

4/5
My book club was reading The Four Winds, which I had already read, so instead I picked up The Grapes of Wrath.
I honestly prefer the latter which offers more characters, more depths, more complexity. It's a very interesting read about a very difficult time. Well-written, realistic.

I'm so disappointed to bail on my #Bookedintime selection. I adore the landscape and nature descriptions. However, it does feel overly preachy, and I'm just not in the right mindset atm to persevere. I will pick it up to try again, at some point. I do feel the fault is mine, not the book.

@Cuilin @dabbe

We follow the displaced Joad family as they make the trek west in search of work and a new home during the Great Depression. Published in 1939, the book feels eerily familiar today - roiling social divisions, vast gaps in wealth/opportunity between rich and poor, the anger hurled at the migrants. Heartbreaking, yes. But the Joads are rendered with such dignity and tenderness that you want to see them through all the hardships you know are coming.

What an amazing and devastating book. It took me a while to get into but from halfway through, it just built and built.
There are so many similarities between these times and today. Corporate greed and hate of others continue. We forget everyone is human, living and/or struggling with their own lives.
What a wonderful read. What wonderful strength and love among those with so little. I wish everyone read and reflected on this book.

It's 50 degrees and windy, but you wouldn't know it. This reading spot is sooo cozy 🤍

🏡Over 31 years ago
🍇The Grapes of Wrath

@TheSpineView #two4tuesday

#Two4Tuesday
@TheSpineView

Thanks for the tags, @TheSpineView and @The_Penniless_Author 🤩😍😃

1. Last move was on Super Bowl Sunday in February 2002. My dad was not happy since we couldn't get the cable hooked up. 😃
2. The tagged book: THE GRAPES OF WRATH. 💙🩶💙

Join in the fun, everyone! 🤩🤩🤩

I found a great playlist to listen to while I read Steinbeck 🎶

I've been on a classics kick lately 😍

HALLELUJAH! A book this good, that I am only just discovering now! I had to see what all the fuss was about after @MrsMalaprop raved about this and talking with several students at school who have read it for their yr 12 English literature class. It gives me hope for the future when our kids can connect with such a classic.
🍇 🍇 🍇 🍇 🍇

1. Absolutely! I learned to drive "3 on a tree" with my dad's '61 Valiant. Enjoyed several years with my own '88 LaBaron that had a 5th gear.
2. How about the car loaded with all the family's possessions in Grapes of Wrath? Heartbreaking image.

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView
@CrowCAH @BarbaraBB @Texreader

This was heartbreaking. I love Steinbeck I honestly believe he is the writer who writes the most beautifully.

I am stunned ?. This was F*ing brilliant and devastating and engrossing and…everything. Thank you Steinbeck for writing this classic that I have been able to appreciate for the first time at the age of 52. It gives me so much hope for all the exceptional books I have yet to discover. I gush, but well, just wow ?.

(Hope you enjoy the juxtaposition of this frivolous photo of my nails matching the décor, matching my book ?).

#currentlyreading Finally making a start on this #classic. Haven‘t read Steinbeck since high school. Think I‘m in the right headspace. With descriptions like this…it‘s not too onerous.

“…a neck as stringy and muscular as a celery stalk…” 😍

It‘s been a while since I‘d read any Steinbeck. My goodness, he‘s a gifted writer. An accurately depressing depiction of families during the dust bowl migration and sadly, I‘m afraid certain aspects of this still ring true today.

Flippin eck, I'd forgotten how absolutely brilliant he is at writing.
The evocative prose, the characters who are completely in my head and I'm constantly thinking about what will happen next.
I've just finished it, cried a bit and proclaimed it one of the most important novels ever.

I honestly thought I had read this before! But by the 2nd or 3rd chapter, it was clear to me that I hadn‘t. Yes, it‘s the story of a family just trying to survive after their farmland dries up and is taken by the bank during the depression/dust bowl. But it‘s also a stark look at family, togetherness, survival and the attitudes of haves vs have nots and how easy it is to boil over. The audio was excellent- complete with harmonica interludes.

Last week of school starts tomorrow! I began Grapes of Wrath with my Honors 11 class to prep for AP next year. We will get through the first third to start their summer reading. Honestly, I‘m loving it. It is probably sacrilege to admit for an English teacher but I haven‘t read it before.

#teachersoflitsy #englishteacher #americanliterature #summerbreak #modernism #dustbowl

One of those long books that you don‘t feel it long at all because you want to know more about the story, about this family. A good book with a sad story. Difficult social-political times. That ending, trying to go on. The mother, Ma, is a strong female character in this story. 4.5/5⭐️

#AuthorAMonth @Soubhiville
#MarchMadnessReadathon @DieAReader @GHABI4ROSES @Andrew65 ⬇️

A title #WithAFruit 🍇 #TemptingTitles ☔️🌸💜

#BookNerd 🤓📚💙

I went into this book with absolutely no expectations of enjoying it. I'm truly glad I was surprised. This was beautiful and heartbreaking and depressingly relevant even today. Granted, it's dated and he uses language that isn't appropriate anymore, but still. So so good. I'm glad I read this for #authoramonth

@soubhiville

I can't believe I've waited this long to read this masterpiece of a book. The characters, the structure of alternating chapters, the incredibly vivid description - all of it makes this the profound piece of literature that has become the benchmark of an era. I'm so glad Steinbeck was March's #AuthorAMonth pick, making me pull this off my bookshelf. @Soubhiville

It‘s a good story, but I find Steinbeck‘s writing boring. The story itself feels repetitive. Because he tells me outright what it means. I don‘t like being told what to think. Make me think. Don‘t force my feelings. Let your words encourage them to form. Stimulate my thoughts. I do find myself most curious about this:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/forgotten-dust-bowl-novel-rivaled-gr...
#authoramonth @Soubhiville

Reading this for #authoramonth I got this copy in NOLA last year.

While I appreciated it more now than when I was younger, The Grapes of Wrath was just ok. I remember liking Of Mice and Men when we read it in school but after these two books this month I don‘t think I‘ll be rereading it.
#AuthorAMonth #BookSpinBingo #MarchMadness #BirthdayPixieReadathon

Due to a damaged library copy of The Grapes of Wrath, I read The Pearl first. I‘ve now gotten a new library copy so I‘m ready to read it for #AuthorAMonth & #Bookopoly. It all worked out just fine.

I couldn‘t decide which Steinbeck to go with for #AuthorAMonth, so I polled my friends. This one was the most recommended. I did read The Pearl many years ago and I remember that I didn‘t like it so much. So much that I avoided Steinbeck ever after. Here‘s hoping this goes better.
@Soubhiville
#MarvelousMarch #MarchMadness
@Andrew65 @DieAReader @GHABI4ROSES

Currently reading The Grapes of Wrath & I‘m planning on also reading The Pearl for #AuthorAMonth. I wasn‘t a Steinbeck fan back in school but wondering if that‘s changed.

#currentreads
Currently I‘m reading for my buddy reads and #AuthorAMonth.
#LittensLoveRomance #SUNDAYBUDDYREAD #Whimsicalreadsbookclub #MarchMadness

There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our successes. The fertile Earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And the children dying of hunger must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates--died of malnutrition--because the food must rot if not sold at a profit.

📖 The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck
🖋 Alan Ginsberg
🎞 A Great Day in Harlem
📺 The Great Pottery Throwdown
🎤 Steve Goodman, The Go-Gos
🎼 Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy by Queen,
The Girl from Ipanema (Joao Gilberto/Stan Getz) #manicmonday #letterg @CBee

Even though I'm not usually one for pancakes, from all the mentioned foods and dishes, this was the one that spoke to me the most. Pancake, maple syrup and bacon - a down to earth breakfast. I've also had some sugar and butter with it, since they had those too.

Wow - what a book! This is one I won't forget about that easily. Even though set during the Great Depression, it's still worth reading nowadays. Especially now, since Steinbeck addresses so many topics that we are still facing: economic crisis, how we treat refugees, environmental disasters due to pollution...
Not a lot is happening in the story, but a lot is going on. Steinbeck digs up the roots of human failures and shows us the face of despair.

The house was dead, and the fields were dead; but this truck was the active thing, the living principle. The ancient Hudson, with bent and scarred radiator screen, with grease in dusty lobules at the worn edges of every moving part, with hub caps gone and caps of red dust in their places—this was the new hearth, the living center of the family; half passenger
car and half truck, high-sided and clumsy.

Thank you for tagging me @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks 😊 And as always I'm late... 😌

I do note and mark quotes in my books, but I often feel as if I'm not that excited about book quotes as all you other Littens... 😅 Here's one of my favourite quotes from one of the books I'm currently reading and loving.

#LittensWanttoKnow

Next up for my book group. I read this so many years ago, I‘m happy to revisit it!

Just my luck…two chunky books for August‘s #roll100

Giunta alla fine di questo lungo viaggio di fame, morte e speranza, non posso fare a meno di pensare che è stato detto tutto. Dalla vita che scorre come un fiume, da un figlio costretto a scappare, da qualcuno che non ce l'ha fatta, dall'acqua che sale e dalla vita che vuole spegnersi ma che poi si trasforma in furore ... E finché c'è forza, c'è vita.

Grazie Steinbeck

East of Eden is still my favorite Steinbeck, but this book is such a heartbreaking story with absolutely beautiful writing.

Following the Joads on their journey for a better life, full of upsets at every turn, and yet somehow the family just keeps going, was one of the best literature experiences I've had in a while.

Thank you @TheAromaofBooks for choosing this book as my prize. I already know it will be well loved and read again and again.

Last weekend I went wedding dress shopping with my cousin‘s fiancée and my mom. We ended up being a little early to her appointment and lucky for me there was a used book shop a couple of doors down. So of course I had to go in. And I found this gorgeous vintage edition of The Grapes of Wrath. I‘m super excited to add this to my vintage collection. ???

A true classic! #Farm

#SavvyChoices

Currently listening to this. Of mice and men is one of my favourite books of all time so I want to explore some of his other writing. Hope to read East of Eden next

Our trip to NOLA is over and we are driving home, but I did manage to visit 3 bookstores, one each day. We totally forgot to look for the little free libraries! None jumped out at me, though. Overall, a very successful trip as far as books go! 🤣 we only missed one actual store, although we were told there was a 5th and it had moved locations!