5. Journal Of A Novel: The East of Eden Letters by John Steinbeck. If you love Eden or Steinbeck, you must read this. 

Fate put this book in a Jackson, TN Goodwill last weekend for me to find while I was reading East of Eden. Could not have been better timing and could not have been a better epilogue to a book I was not ready to be done with. I am very lucky to have found it. 

Steinbeck wrote Eden in a giant notebook given to him by his friend and editor Pascal Covici. Each day, he’d write a letter to Pat on the left pages and write Eden on the right. The result is this collection of real-time insights into writing Eden and into the Hamiltons, minutia of Steinbeck’s life (“today I did many things, redesigned a toilet and rebuilt it, fixed my fish bowl”), bonus: the story of Steinbeck carving the actual box presented to Pat at the beginning of Eden, and darkly intimate (sometimes hilarious) insecurity, doubt and self-deprecation. Oddly comforting to know the mountainous Steinbeck was after all as human as the rest of us pebbles. #2025books