The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

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John Steinbeck, �Once There Was a War�

Started December 31, 2001 � Finished January 2, 2002; 183 pages. Posted 4 January 2002

Okay, so I normally don�t make New Year�s resolutions. Why bother with perfection? (Except to maybe stop being so shy so as to stop never asking out girls that I actually like.) But I just finished cleaning up my room and I was putting away some books that I read over Christmas and New Years, and I thought to myself, �How many of these have you actually NOT read?� (These are kept in different bookcases, so it�s easy to figure out.)

Two hundred and nine books! Two hundred and nine! And I have about four more in my box at work! Jesus fucking Christ! So my resolution is to try and plow through them, which means I probably won�t fix that social skills problem and I will remain dateless. To remind myself that I actually write myself, on occasion, I figured I would track my progress here, so to keep me motivated I�m going to try this.

I�m in the middle of transferring all of these from a different site, so if you�re looking for current reviews, check the Nothing Enterprises (ed. note — now defunct.) page. And really, pay no attention to this post. It�s pretty dull. Think of it as first blog jitters.

Steinbeck is my favorite author, and �The Grapes of Wrath� is my all-time favorite book. I had to give an oral report on Grapes last semester and read a passage from the novel, and even after practicing it several times I still choked up at the end. But for a writer I like so much, he really wrote some shit. The early novels (�To a God Unknown,� Pastures of Heaven,� �The Long Valley,� etc.,�) all have this early hippie-earth-worship thing going on that I never related to because the world is my ashtray. (Oooh, tres punk!)

This isn�t like that. It�s actually propaganda for the Army during World War II, so this was kind of amusing to read when you compare it to how pissed off he became with the United States and the capitalist system.

The writing is good, but at times it becomes excruciatingly schmaltzy. I guess it made the wives and mothers feel better, and so it served its purpose.

Now where are all those girls I like?


Rating: Pay flea market prices.

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