NCO Book Club: East of Eden

From Wikipedia: 

East of Eden is a novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck, published in September 1952.

Often described as Steinbeck's most ambitious novel, East of Eden brings to life the intricate details of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, and their interwoven stories. The novel was originally addressed to Steinbeck's young sons, Thom and John (then 6½ and 4½ respectively). Steinbeck wanted to describe the Salinas Valley for them in detail: the sights, sounds, smells, and colors.

The Hamilton family in the novel is said to be based on the real-life family of Samuel Hamilton, Steinbeck's maternal grandfather. A young John Steinbeck also appears briefly in the novel as a minor character.

According to his last wife Elaine, he considered this to be a requiem for himself—his greatest novel ever. Steinbeck stated about East of Eden: "It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years." He further claimed: "I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this."

Book Club Ground Rules:

1) We will have a discussion piece to keep the conversation moving along and not focused on any one person in the group.

2) There will be a time limit for the person holding the discussion piece (an egg timer will determine this)

3) We will refrain from judgements and personal attacks of the person speaking or of the discussion going on. We agree to have healthy disagreements and open discussion.

4) There are no book restrictions. We will mix the genres and keep the books diverse to keep the discussion interesting. We will not be reading Danielle Steele-type novels, however.

5) The books we choose must be in paperback and available in used bookstores, the library &/or at Firehouse books

6) We will choose books on a quarterly basis. The next book choices will be made at the March meeting. We have all agreed to keep an open mind about the choices. For example, just because you don''t like the book doesn''t mean that you shouldn''t read it or attend the next meeting. It''s important to keep an open mind, and you may end up loving the book that you wanted to read the least!

7) We will rotate the book choices quarterly, so all new members will bring suggestions for the March discussion.

8) To encourage discussion, we will have a short introductory discussion from each person in attendance at the beginning of the discussion. (about 2 minutes for each person)

9) We will limit the number of people in the group to 12.