Thank You, John Steinbeck

I am a lover of lists. I will make a list about anything. I frequently blog about The List, which is my ultimate compilation of every Thrillist and Buzzfeed article I can get my hands on and is 23 pages long and growing. *Maybe I don’t “get my hands on” them, they are internet articles after all.

I also have a reading list; it is based off of a list of classic literature/”must-reads” that I found at Barnes and Noble and is a mere six pages long and is sometimes growing and sometimes shrinking (riveting and informative as I’m sure they are, I’m not sure I need to read The Origin of Species or The Communist Manifesto to be a successful English/theatre teacher, so they’ll probably be saying goodbye to the list sometimes soon). The reason I need to keep adding to my reading list (of 222 books) is because it is incomplete – the list I found at Barnes and Noble only had books that were in the public domain on it! This means that modern day curriculum staples are absent – no Gatsby, no The Catcher in the Rye, no To Kill a Mockingbird and no John Steinbeck.

I go through phases of what I’m interested in reading (or not interested in reading) as well. For example, I’ve sworn off all Russians for the near future after taking a Russian literature class my sophomore year of college – I’m still depressed about what I read. After completing my four year project of Jane Austen’s canon (there were several long hiatuses from that one because I’m not really a fan), I was determined to read only female authors for a while. Now I’ve moved on to books that revolve around traveling! It seems appropriate. During my break between the summer and fall tours, I completed The Grapes of Wrath and now I’ve coincidentally moved on to another Steinbeck. I typically read on my kindle – it’s so practical when you’ve got to confine yourself to two suitcases and a backpack – but last spring, I found a used copy of Travels with Charley for $4 and decided that it should be mine. Now, I’m finally getting around to actually reading it.

The great thing with a kindle is that you can highlight passages you like and digitally save them forever and I’ve grown fond of this feature but you can’t do that with a real book. When reading other hardcopy books, I’ve gotten into the habit of using sticky notes but since we just addressed the space issue, I think you can see why it wouldn’t make sense to do that. So, with my little pink pen, I am marking up my book to remember quotes that I feel a deep, spiritual connection with or just think are funny and there are definitely some good ones that I can fully relate to and can say that even after all this time, they’re true.

A few nights ago, I was reading and I found a quote that so fully relates to Montana and even Wolf Point that I had to share. The old Beckster says “that those states with the shortest histories and the least world-shaking events have the most historical markers.” YES. Montana’s highways are entirely comprised of “Historic Point” markers; sometimes it feels like there are more historic points than people out here. And yes, there is at least one Historic Point here in Wolf Point.

So, thank you, John Steinbeck, for putting my thoughts in writing for me.

(Everyone should also know that I read “Historic Point” in the voice of Dug from Up).

Also, the no WiFi situation at the house means that I have time to write about all of this in the nauseatingly full detail that I just did, so get ready for a lot of posts about nothing!