Oh Gosh! Let's Start With Of Mice and Men!

So I've been completely awful about posting. The issue is that my mom has given me an ultimatum--get any more zeroes, don't go to the summer program I want. Screw my lack of motivation, I've got to go this summer! Anyway, now it's a Saturday, and homework is put out of mind until Sunday. Enough about my life, let's get some book reviews going!
I believe I last posted about The House of the Scorpion. Since then, I've finished several books... let's see
Of Mice and Men (school) by John Steinbeck
The Last Universe by William Sleator
The second Percy Jackson book by Rick Riordan (will review when done with series)
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (the second book in The Hunger Games series, which I don't know how to review without spoiling it :- (
Oh! Nearly forgot Cycler by Lauren McLaughlin.
I'm almost done with Kingdom Keepers II by Ridley Pearson.

So! Let's start with OMaM! It's of course, an American classic, a book millions of high schoolers have been made to read... and my English class has just finished it. I'm not a huge Steinbeck fan. I read his novella The Pearl last year, and I hated it. I hate Steinbeck almost as much as I hate Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451 was okay, but the ending kind of sucked and the author interview showed Bradbury to be a complete narcissist.)!
Anyway, Of Mice and Men was all right. Being forced to read a book always takes away from it a bit, but it wasn't bad. It's a novella, six chapters, a little over 100 pages. It's about, as you may know, two men, George and Lennie, who live in 1930s California. They are trying to achieve their dream of owning a small farm, where Lennie will tend the rabbits, and they'll "live off the fatta the lan'". It's got awful grammar (on purpose... and only the dialogue... it's the whole slang/way people talked), the only female is only referred to as "Curley's Wife", and to me, the main message was "there are some things in life that are out of your hands, and will consequently stop you from achieving your dreams".
Anyway, Lennie is a large man, very strong, but with the mind of a child. George is smaller and sharper. The two travel together because George took care of Lennie after his Aunt Clara died. The two are heading for a ranch near Soledad, which I found out translates into "loneliness". They had to leave their old town, Weed, because Lennie, wanting to feel soft things, grabbed on to some girl's dress. Of course, she freaked out and accused him of raping her. Yeah, they had to flee for their lives. So poor Lennie's always accidentally getting into trouble. I saw his mental condition as one of the obstacles you can't control.
Anyway, the conflict is of course that Lennie does something else bad by accident, and George has to decide to run away with Lennie, or the alternative...
If you haven't read it for school, or aren't going to, I would say you could read it. It's pretty short, probably a couple hours' read when you're not analyzing the whole damn book :- ).
Anyway, next up, The Last Universe!