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Feb 28, 2011

karen rated it:

how do i review cannery row? like all the steinbeck i have read, except the dead pony, of which i remember very little except not being too keen on it, it is saturated with these wonderful marginalized characters who are desperate and hopeless and yearning. but they are surviving. and there is so much beauty in the squalor. it reminds me in my feeling-parts of suttree, which is one of my all time favorite books. this book is full of such well-meaning ineptitude and many very serious things couch More...

42 comments like (38 people liked it)

Feb 13, 2010

Ben rated it:

I first read this many years ago. Riddled with ADD, frozen by nervousness, and thrown-off by wack-ass hormones, I had trouble reading anything at the time, and this was no exception. A parable of my formerly wasted time on earth, I read it and got nothing out of it. Hell, I didn’t even remember I had read it until I started it (again) 10 days ago.

But oh did I appreciate it this go-round. Steinbeck got me to like the kind of people that, at first judgment, I would deem ignorant, a More...

30 comments like (44 people liked it)

May 28, 2009

brian rated it:

20 pages in i immediately noticed the sherwood anderson influence and shot off an email to my friend xxx, urging him to read it on the flight to nyc. his girlfriend of many years just left him and i figured cannery row might inspire. his response was... um... deranged? check it:

"brian - had a hell of a day. almost got shot down on San Julien this afternoon. Bullet smoke so close I could taste it. Almost got arrested breaking up a Guatemalan knife fight, too. got robbed $40 More...

18 comments like (10 people liked it)

Aug 01, 2008

Logan rated it:

This is the first Steinbeck that I've attempted to read as an adult. We had some brief flirtations during my teen years but never really hooked up. I think it was probably a wise choice. Now we've found each other as adults and can really appreciate each other's complexities and I can tell that I'll likely be making sweet love to Johnny S. for years to come.

Cannery Row is a really brief read that features some of the most concise yet descriptive writing I've ever come across. Set More...

4 comments like (10 people liked it)

Feb 29, 2008

Juliana rated it:

While the setting for this novel is somewhat bleak--an impoverished and ofttimes depressed coastal town in California--the characters are brought to life by everday exchanges and emotions the reader can relate to.

I knew after the first paragraph that this novel would be enjoyable because it is so well crafted. One would expect nothing less from John Steinbeck! I remember Steinbeck and Hemingway as the staples of my high school literary fare, as required by those who had seen more of More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2008

Dustin rated it:

Steinbeck gives a convincing case for the inherent goodness of man in this short novella. While Mack and the boys constantly end up destroying property and stealing and taking advantage of people, it is so clear that they have only the purest intentions. The first time they try to throw a party for Doc, they end up doing hundreds of dollars in damage to his laboratory and Doc never showed up until the next morning. To make up for it, the boys did perhaps their only successful sentiment int the More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

May 04, 2007

Clark rated it:

I'm not entirely sure why this is my favorite book. I suppose that I like stories about a particular place and the way that it is briefly defined by the characters that exist within that place. After all, I don't think that the places that I have lived in my life are inherently interesting, but they become fascinating because I can place them in the context of the characters that I knew, the things that I did and the way that I stretched out in them and lazed about. The small, everyday things ma More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 16, 2011

Jason rated it:

Authors tend to be chroniclers of their time but only the great literary works are able to reach out to a wide audience for each subsequent generation without losing any of its core authenticity despite the so-called "dated" subject matter. John Steinbeck's Cannery Row is one such novel and despite the setting being 1930's Americana, the themes of universal human experience are still emotionally powerful and socially relevant. There is something about stories that revolve around simple More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 09, 2008

Ken-ichi rated it:

I enjoyed this book for so many reasons, I don’t know where to start. Doc is just such a likable, human character. His curiosity is inspiring, his insatiable appetites for beer and hamburgers hilarious (and familiar), and his ability to hold great empathy and realism without one crushing the other is admirable, and at times tragic. Well, I’m not sure his fatalism is so wonderful, but it is awfully real and recognizable.

The rest of the cast are a joy to follow, and the ever-present More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 24, 2008

Jessica rated it:

“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses.”

Cannery Row is even more than that—it’s people. It’s Lee Chong and Dora and More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 12, 2007

Joseph rated it:

I like Hazel alot and feel like he does here often!

"Hazel picke up a nobbly purplish starfish from the bottom of the pool and popped it into his nearlyu full gunny sack. " I wonder what they do with them' he said.

"Do with what?" Doc asked

"The starfish" said Hazel...

"THey study them" Doc said patiently and he remebered that he had answered this question for Hazeldozens of times before. But Doc h More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 02, 2007

E. rated it:

You know how some books remind of a certain place or time in your life but generally do so with a little bit of a rose shaded tint?

Well Cannary Row reminds me of a time that never really existed in my life but should have cause it would have been freakin great.

I can smell Northern California's coast when the title of this book crosses my mind. I can see dark cold water and washed out, cooly inviting beach. I can taste damp cigarette's and beer from quart jugs, beach fi More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 14, 2009

Bruce rated it:

In my early teens I think I read just about everything in print by Steinbeck, or at least what was available at bookstores and libraries within my range. Sometimes I read one right after the other, just as I went through Vonnegut in college and Marx Brothers movies while in high school. I gorged. And just like eating an entire cheesecake in one sitting,sated to the point of bloated dullness, it was a good long time before I felt like reading Steinbeck again even though, clearly, I loved his b More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 19, 2011

Ayban rated it:

May have spoilers. Read at your own RISK.

Aaahhhh!!! I have to admit, I really liked this book. I'm a John Steinbeck noob, this is the first book I have read written by him. I just started reading this yesterday( Dec. 7 2011) trying to have a break reading short-fiction written by our home grown writers, the next thing I know is I've been holding the book all day and can't stop reading.

While I was reading, it made me feel that all the characters in the book are true, that More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 24, 2008

Nightshade rated it:

I did NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT like this book. It has no plot and is very random and confusing. I had to read it for my summer book report, and I found the characters' lives hard to follow because the book jumped around a lot. There are also random, insignificant events thrown in randomly.

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jun 04, 2007

Lisbeth rated it:

"I and the boys" invite you to the party.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2010

Bruce rated it:

I'm reading this for a regular book club at my school. Steinbeck has certain qualities I like. The short story, "The Chrysanthemums," is one of most poignant stories I've ever read. The play version of Of Mice and Men (which Steinbeck also wrote) is more successful than the novelette in its skillful juxtaposition of parallel situations exemplifying every individual's need to love and be loved by someone. He depicts, however, a malevolent universe, somewhat similar to Thomas Hardy, More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 22, 2008

Rodney rated it:

This is a personal favorite of mine. It concerns the outcast and down trodden of society in Monterey, California towards the end of the depression. It is funny and heart-warming, but the main emphasis is on the dignity and value of each person be they prostitute, derelict or scientist. You cannot help but fall in love with this set of characters who are sincerely doing the best they can (or they think they are).

This book shares some things in common with "Grapes of Wrath" a More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 24, 2009

Brad rated it:

I find it difficult to remember Cannery Row after over twenty years distance (I read it in high school, although it wasn't assigned. I enjoyed Of Mice and Men so much I had to keep reading), but I do envision Mack walking past the sardine factories as vividly as if I read it this morning.

The plot details, the way all the supporting characters linked up, even who Mack and the boys were doing their "thing" for (hell...I can't even remember what "thing" they were doi More...

4 comments like (5 people liked it)

Nov 04, 2008

Mme. Bookling rated it:

From the beginning, Cannery Row was akin to sitting on the porch with your grandpa while he smokes his pipe and tells the tales of a disjointed but delightful community, full of reality, beauty, touching kindnesses, the frailty of human isolation, and the melancholic nostalgia of lost love.

I wasn't expected to be touched by this work or even think of it as important in terms of Steinbeck's career, but I believe this little gem to be tantamount in importance to Grapes of Wrath or East More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 23, 2009

Justin rated it:

The writer in me was inspired while reading this. I am a Steinbeck novice, but adored his shotgun vignettes of this little microcosm. I never felt particularly attached to any character, but was consistently interested in learning about them from my third-person perch.

His blatant sarcasm is masterful. I am in awe of his ability to precisely create an emotion, ambiance, or moment with the use of contrasting terms. On their own they could not define his ideas, but the tug-of-war that More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Aug 20, 2009

Michael rated it:

I just visited Monterey, CA and walked through Cannery Row and was inspired to read the book. Although it was not quite as I expected (I thought it would be a little more relentlessly grim), I thoroughly enjoyed it. The writing is great and it was more humorous than I thought. I did always have an impending sense of dread that no matter what was happening in the book (dramatic action, matter of fact description, humorous anecdote) I always had the sense that some disaster was about to occur. More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Nov 17, 2007

Simone rated it:

A friend of mine grew up in Salinas having to read every Steinbeck story ever written. The joke is that the central coast worships him but that he hated living there. After reading Cannery Row, I doubt his feelings really traversed to the level of animosity so much as sympathy, at least that is true of his depiction in this tale. Sweetly.

From the window of his laboratory, Doc observes the tides of town, knowing by analysis and instinct what to expect from his unbeknownst specimens More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 13, 2008

Rollin rated it:

This book created one of my more embarrassing moments in high school english. I threw the book in my backpack and it floated to the bottom until the day we were supposed to review the story in class. I assumed incorrectly that because there were 30 or so kids in class that I wouldn't be asked a question without having a few previous comments to add my insight too. The teacher called on me to start the discussion and I started into a commentary on coal mines and canary's (the little yellow bird). More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Taylor rated it:

It's Steinbeck, so you know it is a very nearly, perhaps even entirely, perfect blend of beauty and tragedy. It's such a good thing that it becomes divine and heart-wrenching comedy. He writes a page and a half about the life of a tidepool early in the book that is some of the best descriptive writing I have ever read -- as though he and the tidepool were making love on top of his typewriter and that bit of chapter is the result.

The first Steinbeck I read was "Of Mice and Men" More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 06, 2011

Christopher rated it:

Thus far, this is one of my favorite Steinbeck novels. In this tale, Steinbeck's recurrent themes of friendship, loyalty, nature, and the human connection are all intertwined together to make something that is remarkable, beautiful, and sometimes saddening. Everybody in here is devoted to each other in some way, even the scrupulous Lee Chong, who, as owner of the town's popular grocery store, tends to be the proverbial stick in the mud for everyone's plans. And yet, every major character in this More...

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Apr 20, 2010

Joyce rated it:

Written in a style that Steinbeck uses with great effect in his earlier California novels, Cannery Row is a collection of stories about yet another bunch of somewhat seedy characters who live in one of the more down-at-heels areas, the sardine canning section, of Monterey. More effectively than in Tortilla Flat, which this book resembles a great deal in structure and style, there is a central, organizing figure Doc who, though a resident of Cannery Row is yet an outsider, who plays Bach fugues More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 29, 2009

Matthew rated it:

Sometimes I think the contemporary reader (and here I'm speaking mainly for myself) has grown too accustomed to the varied forms modern storytelling can take. My first instinct is to wish I could travel back to a time when the kind of discordant shifts Steinbeck used in this novel were still considered fresh. I want to read this book when it was first published, to see if it would reveal something earsh-shattering about the structure of a novel. But even Cannery Row, where Steinbeck presents a More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2012

Tyson rated it:

Those who have read Steinbeck before know exactly what to expect from his books, and I mean that in the most pleasant way possible. Although a lover of his writing cannot fathom how anyone could not enjoy his stories, I believe that it takes a certain kind of person to appreciate how he goes about telling them. That said, he has clearly reached a very large audience, and his work and name remain popular decades after his death.

If you enjoy fine, intricate details and perceptions abo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 30, 2012

Sherri rated it:

Cannery Row is a loosely put together series of vignettes about a group of people who live in Monterey, California.

Running through all of these stories are stories of a group of men named Mack, Eddie, Hughie, Hazel and Jones. These men lived for free (based on a mild threat to the owner) in a one room building that really wasn't meant to be a home. They also were drunk most of the time based on what Eddie gleaned from his bar-tending job - whatever was left in a guest's drink afte More...

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