It's worth it despite the sentimentality and melodrama, and not just because it captures a unique time and place in U.S. history. I never understood what people meant when they compared people to the Joad family until I did.

Have you read The Call of the Wild? Like The Grapes of Wrath, it's one of those books that people tend not to read if their schools didn't assign it. And it's likely to be the next classic I do.