Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

So this may be hard for some people to believe, but I just read my first Steinbeck novel ever. I know, I know, I know... I'm an English major. Unfortunately, I'm an English major who has yet to have a Steinbeck-fan as a professor. And in high school, the honors classes didn't read him. But considering how many absolute classics he's written, I had to read some of his stuff. And I must tell you, I loved it!

I love the way he writes. He incorporates so much description into the plot line. Instead of introducing the setting and the backgrounds of the characters before setting up the plot, he incorporates it all together. Which is beautiful if you ask me. As much as I love Jane Austen, I must admit that at times her novels are a bit verbose when it comes to descriptions. Not that it's a bad thing, but you can definitely tell a difference in the intended audience between the two time periods.

In Jane Austen's time period, the people reading books were the wealthy who could A) afford a book and B) had the leisure time to read a book. The authors were catering to a class of people who would really savor a book and had plenty of time to read. John Steinbeck on the other hand, was writing for a much more current time period. The average reader was anyone between the people who could afford to buy books during the Great Depression and the people who would borrow books from the library. These books needed more action, because the reader of the time period didn't have as much leisure time. They weren't looking necessarily for a book to take up the countless hours of their day, but rather for a book to relax them after a hard day of work. In other words, they wanted something that moved quicker.

Fast forward now to today. Authors know that for their book to be a bestseller it has to be able to be made into a movie. More detail is being added in, but the story lines are also more complex. Take two writers in particular: John Grisham and Tom Clancy. Their novels, especially their later novels, are designed for action movies. Their chapter breaks align perfectly with jumping back and forth between two story-lines in a movie. Reading the books you feel like you're reading the screen play of a movie.

So now, you have to ask yourself. Do you like the type of novels coming out or would you rather have a higher class of literature to read. Would you like to go back to being the "gentle reader" that earlier authors wrote to. If so there's only one thing you can do... buy books that live up to your standards. Sure the public library is a great place to find new books and read something before you buy it, but if you really love a book buy it. Authors won't continue to write their books just because they're very popular at the library. They need to be a best seller. So if you find a book you love, do an author a favor and go buy it... not second hand either, go to a bookstore and buy a brand new copy. In tha way you can support the authors you love.