28. East of Eden by John Steinbeck This American fable based on the story of Cain and Abel has often been touted as one of the best, if not the best, Steinbeck novel. I would have to concur. Steinbeck uses the Salinas Valley in California as a symbolic backdrop to the story. In the opening scene, he introduces two sets of mountains, the western range kind and inviting, the eastern range cold and forbidding. Steinbeck encouraged me to look at Cain and Abel in a different way. As he and his characters note, it is one of the most difficult to comprehend stories in the Bible, probably along with the attempted sacrifice of Isaac. It goes against our notion of what we want God to be. Why did God reject Cain's offering? Although we must condemn Cain for his own action, since he has free will, the Ultimate Father figure seems to have unnecessarily provoked murder by showing favoritism. Then again, the Torah is all about the favoritism of the chosen people. So perhaps the story is not so su...
Life, Books, and SFF