I picked this up from a Little Free Library in Winnipeg.

I’ll take this to our monthly bookcrossers’ meeting and leave it at the OBCZ shelf.

I've been wanting to read Cannery Row for a long time so when Matty brought this to our meet-up I snapped it up. Thanks Matty.

This was a wonderful book to read while the whole world is trying to figure out how to survive during a global pandemic. We think we are the only ones facing this sort of crisis but we forget that past generations had their own crises and the Great Depression of the 1930s was one of the worst. Cannery Row is set in Monterey California during the Depression and it shows how people with very little or, in some cases, nothing not only managed to survive but to help one another.

I can't possibly encapsulate this book in a short review. I think the first sentence of the novel does a much better job than I can:
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.
There is a diverse cast of characters in the novel and I gather from the foreward that most of them are based upon real people who lived on Cannery Row in the 1930s. A central character is Doc who runs a biological specimen supply business. Doc is based upon Steinbeck's real life friend Ed Ricketts and Steinbeck dedicated the book to Ricketts. Steinbeck and Ricketts shared a love for marine biology and had an ecological philosophy long before it was popular to do so. I've not spent nearly enough time by or in oceans and this book makes me wish I wasn't landlocked. Although I wonder how much of what they experienced would survive now.

It is an exquisite read and I am so glad I got my hands on a copy.

I left this book on a bench in this lovely garden maintained by the people of the town. This release is for the 2020 52 Towns in 52 weeks release challenge - Town #4 - Boissevain, MB. This release is also for the 2020 Keep Them Moving (KTM) Challenge.

When you find a BookCrossing book it is yours to do with what you like. You can read it and keep it or pass it on or if you don't think it is your kind of book pass it on to someone who might like it or release it in a spot for someone else to find like you just did. Whatever you choose it would be great if you could write a short note letting us know what new adventures the book is on.