#8 in Drama & theatre
Of Mice and Men
- 123
- Pages
- about 2.5 h
- Reading time
- Film 1939 +3
- On screen
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Our view
In little more than a hundred pages Steinbeck follows two migrant ranch hands through Depression-era California and makes loneliness the real subject. Every figure on the ranch is lonely in a different way, and each is drawn with sympathy rather than judgement. The central friendship gives the ending its force. Short and plain-spoken, but not a comforting read: a classic that can be finished in an evening and remembered much longer.
Worth knowing Steinbeck designed it as a novel that could be staged almost unchanged, and the play opened on Broadway the same year, 1937. His setter puppy chewed up half of the first draft, and he had to rewrite it. The title comes from Robert Burns’s poem To a Mouse. At about a hundred pages it can be read in an evening, and it has long been one of the books most often challenged in American schools.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Of Mice and Men is a 1937 novella written by American author John Steinbeck. It describes the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, as they move from place to place in California, searching for jobs during the Great Depression.
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen 4 times — from 1939 to 1998.
- FilmOf Mice and MenIMDb
- FilmOf Mice and MenIMDb
- FilmMabrouk and BulbulIMDb
- TV filmDes souris et des hommesIMDb
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.7 across 3,596 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 96% of the weight and the score stays at 7.7 — the Drama & theatre average of 7.6 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.0 | 305 | 9% |
| Google Books | 8.0 | 12 | 0% |
| Hardcover | 7.7 | 3.3K | 91% |
Frequently asked
How long is Of Mice and Men?
It has 123 pages — shorter than 92% of the ranked books in Drama & theatre.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Drama & theatre — with scores between 7.1 and 7.8, closest to this book.
