So far in the reading, The Grapes of Wrath, it is going good. I think it is a little slow in the beginning but then starts to take into more exciting scenes. What strikes me the most is the way they talk and that the characters do not sound very intelligent. Challenges I have noticed so far are trying to understand the slang terms they use that I am not used to. I obviously did not live back then and they use a lot of different language compared to how we speak today.

One thing I researched was that more than 13 million (another website told me 15 million) Americans lost their jobs. I know that might sound like very obvious fact that most people know but it's just crazy thinking about the number. That is a huge number of people without jobs-- I would of hated to live during that time period. The second thing I found is that after the initial crash of the stock market, there was a wave of suicides in New York's financial district. It was said that the clerks of one hotel even started asking new guests if they needed a room for sleeping or jumping. I thought that story was somewhat funny but very tragic.