Grapes of Wrath RAL - The Annoyance

Well helloooooo, Steinbeck, you old stick! We haven't spent as much time together as some other people ::coughEveryoneinthisread-a-longcough::, but I'm sure you'll forgive me. You see, I got distracted by being in California's wine country, which I'm sure you will agree is an acceptable reason not to read anything except terrible romance novels. I'm not sure how this book will end - although people keep threatening tears - and I really canNOT handle tears while I'm drinking wine.

SO. Let's discuss your first three two* chapters and overlook the fact that I am obviously still That Girl in class who never did the reading and got an A anyway. My future PhD in Lit Crit is virtually assured by my ability to bullshit my way through just about any literary discussion using the double-barrelled shotgun that is Betty Friedan and Sylvia Plath. But I digress (shocking)!

CHAPTER 1:

In which things are grey and dreary and pre-Oz black-and-white, and then there's this amazing, almost Biblical description of  how people survive under such conditions without some ruby shoes:

"Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent and they did not move often, And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men - to feel whether this time the men would break." 

UGGGHHHHH the bleakness and the stillness and the general depressiveness gives me a pre-emptive sad because technically NOTHING HAS HAPPENED YET.

Bring it, JStein.

CHAPTER 2:

In which a guy skilfully entraps a truck driver into giving him a ride in a truck that says, "No Rides" right on the window, and then reveals that he (the hitchhiker) is a murderer, sentenced to 7 years but "sprung in four for keepin' my nose clean."

Okay, Steinbeck. You got me. I skimmed through the first 19 pages again today in order to write this post, and found myself stopping to actually read over and over again. I was planning to play video games tonight because it's Tuesday, but I think instead...

*I opened my book to my bookmark and found it in the first page of chapter 3, meaning I stopped 19 pages in and didn't even get to the land turtle. Honestly, this is just embarrassing.