How Steinbeck Used His Journal as a Tool of Discipline

How John Steinbeck used his journal as a "daily act of showing up." Or as Steven Pressfield calls it "putting your ass where your heart wants to be."

Love Steinbeck but funny enough have never read The Grapes of Wrath (probably because it was assigned reading in high school). Must have read Cannery Row a dozen times - one of my all-time favorite beach books.  

The article is well worth you time. Good life advice - and this summer The Grapes of Wrath is on my reading list!

Some Things You Can't Explain

Some things you can't explain.

Over the course of many years I have read and re-read both The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham and also Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. I've found Larry's "enlightenment" instructive and inspirational and Cannery Row is just a fun book to read over a couple summers days at the beach. I've also read many other books by both Maugham and Steinbeck - but never their masterpieces.

My friend Bill bristles when someone comments, for example, that a pitcher has just thrown "another masterpiece". There can only be one masterpiece. That's what makes it the "master" piece. The acknowledged masterpiece for Maugham is Of Human Bondage and for Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath.  I've never read either book. Over the years I've bought several copies of each book but for whatever reason have never actually read them. I've tried several times to read James Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses and several times have failed. But with Joyce I can explain my failure - the book is just so dense. I have no such excuse for either Of Human Bondage or The Grapes of Wrath.

Some things you just can't explain.

Top 5 - Literary Masterpieces I Can't Read

Today is Don DeLillo's birthday (he turned 71 today). His birthday is another reminder of how I've never been able to make it through his masterpiece Underworld. I've picked the book up several times but around page 100 I just lose interest. No matter how many people tell me how great the book is - I just can't finish it. There are a number of "great" books that fit this description. here are the top 5 masterpieces that I either can't finish or have no interest in starting.

1. James Joyce Ulysses - I seem to pick this book up every year and make it to about page 100
2. John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition) - I re-read Cannery Row every summer but can't get interested in the Grapes.
3. Somerset Maugham Of Human Bondage (Signet Classics) - I've read just about everything else by Maugham but I can't finish this book
4. Don DeLillo Underworld: A Novel
5. Norman Mailer The Executioner's Song