Both Steinbeck articles are interesting, but negative about his work. They wonder why the books are still so popular. After my book group’s discussion, I don’t wonder; I was the only one who didn’t love the book. One woman commented that when she read Grapes in high school, she probably skipped the commentary chapters to focus on the Joads. As a 40yo she read them, but paid them less attention. They didn’t bother her as much as they did me.

Amy, I agree that it’s impolite to disregard books from our youth that were important, or books that don’t endure. But I think that best-of lists that include up-to-the minute choices will pick more duds than one that has some perspective of time. I never found a compelling review to read Zadie Smith’s On Beauty,and I wonder if that will still be deemed a new classic in a few years. And I wonder if other recent books, like Ferris’s Then We Came to the End, which I loved, might show stamina in the longer run.

I read the Stegner a few years ago, when my sister recommended and lent it to me. I loathed it. I thought it was an anti-feminist tirade by a sexist old man, and was so moved by my dislike that I wrote a long essay on it for the now-defunct site Chicklit. To each her own. It makes for some wonderful book discussions.

That said, the books that I bother to reread are few and far between, because there are simply too many other books out there that I’m dying to read. Among those that I do reread periodically is Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose, which I read again about every five years, and I always seem to get something more from it. Hmmm…it’s been almost five years…