The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck (1961) is the last Steinbeck novel of my Steinbeck Summer 2025 project.
I enjoyed The Winter of Our Discontent very much. It was nice to end on a positive note. It is also very nice to be done.
The Winter of Our Discontent was set in the early 1960’s. The story was linear, it was easy to follow. I liked and could easily keep track of the characters.
I was able to increase the audio speed to 1.20 which brought the very slow pace up to normal. This faster pace helps reading Steinbeck tremendously. I highly recommend it.
I mentioned before - there were waiting lists on Libby for almost all the Steinbeck titles. As I finished each book, there were people waiting. This is just a little crazy to contemplate. Clearly I was not the only person reading Steinbeck this summer.
Steinbeck was a worthy summer reading endeavor for me. This project gave me *structure and a book list.
*One of my book groups did not meet all summer. Dropping from four groups to three groups (plus Youngest’s group) made me feel like I had almost no book groups. I realize that makes no sense. But, I needed more assigned titles. Focusing on one author filled my summer reading list easily. I was not scrambling for books. As I finished each selection, I knew what I was reading next.
I most definitely needed to tackle Steinbeck as a focused/set project, with a deadline, in order to finish. I was done a couple weeks before Labor Day, the end of summer, I completed Steinbeck easily.
I plan to do this same project with other authors, in future summers. Gretchen Rubin also focuses on one author each summer. This philosophy would work in the winter too.
Did I read every single Steinbeck title? No, but I stuck with almost all of them, finishing the majority. I read 18 Steinbeck pieces with this project.
What would I recommend? Doing what I did, coming up with a list, working your way through them, skipping things as needed.
Here is someone who recommends 15 of Steinbeck’s works. This blog post includes nonfiction pieces too -
https://reedsy.com/discovery/blog/john-steinbeck-books
I maintain accounts on GoodReads and StoryGraph, thanks to youngest getting me organized.
StoryGraph -
Note - I did not re-read The Red Pony which I had read previously. I skipped The Gift. I marked off a short story already included in one of the collections I read. Zapata was not available in audio format. I did not finish The Acts of King Arthur. I, still, do not plan to read his nonfiction nor the rest of his short stories as part of this project. So, I am done with Steinbeck for now.
In each book post, I utilize https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/
This is a wonderful website that helps clarify the publication order of books and verifies book series. I use this website because there are no spoilers. But if I need a description, I can click over using the links, easily. There are also author bios.
