You can't judge a book by its cover, but you certainly can judge a book by its opening paragraph:
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. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.
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Who: English Language Book Club
What: Cannery Row by John Steinbeck - 1945
Where: Starbucks Helix Sky Garden EmQuartier - 5th Floor, 693 Sukhumvit Rd, Khlong Tan Nuea, Watthana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand
When: Saturday, December 20, 2025 - 6:00-8:00 PM
Why: John Steinbeck wrote some of the greatest novels, and this one has the best opening paragraph ever.
How: Buy the book or download the PDF online, read the book, show up with questions, ideas, and your favorite sections of the book for discussion. Afterward, some of us will go eat and get a drink nearby.
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck PDF
