Staff Pick
Cannery Row is a strange, episodic tale about the misadventures of the curious people who live in and around the eponymous town. I'd recommend this book to anyone who loved Steinbeck's other works, or who wants to read more classic novels from U.S. authors. Steinbeck is one of my favorite writers, and I consider Cannery Row to be as indispensable as The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and Of Mice and Men. Recommended By Nickolas J., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps, a new series of twenty-six collectible and hardcover editions, each with a type cover showcasing a gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet. In a design collaboration between Jessica Hische and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, the series features unique cover art by Hische, a superstar in the world of type design and illustration, whose work has appeared everywhere from Tiffany and Co. to Wes Anderson's recent film
Moonrise Kingdom to Penguin's own bestsellers
Committed and
Rules of Civility. With exclusive designs that have never before appeared on Hische's hugely popular Daily Drop Cap blog, the Penguin Drop Caps series debuted with an 'A' for Jane Austen's
Pride and Prejudice, a 'B' for Charlotte Brönte's
Jane Eyre, and a 'C' for Willa Cather's
My Ántonia. It continues with more perennial classics, perfect to give as elegant gifts or to showcase on your own shelves.
S is for Steinbeck. Unburdened by the material necessities of the more fortunate, the denizens of Cannery Row discover rewards unknown in more traditional society. Henry the painter sorts through junk lots for pieces of wood to incorporate into the boat he is building, while the girls from Dora Floods bordello venture out now and then to enjoy a bit of sunshine. Lee Chong stocks his grocery with almost anything a man could want, and Doc, a young marine biologist who ministers to sick puppies and unhappy souls, unexpectedly finds true love. Cannery Row is just a few blocks long, but the story it harbors is suffused with warmth, understanding, and a great fund of human values. First published in 1945, and drawn from Steinbeck's memories of real inhabitants of Monterey, California, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it isboth the loneliness of the individual and the exuberance of community.
Review
John Steinbeck knew and understood America and Americans better than any other writer of the twentieth century. (
The Dallas Morning News) A man whose work was equal to the vast social themes that drove him. (Don DeLillo)"
Review
Winner of the 2012 Fifty Books/Fifty Covers show, organized by Design Observer in association with AIGA and Designers and Books
Winner of the 2014 Type Directors Club Communication Design Award
Praise for Penguin Drop Caps:
"[Penguin Drop Caps] convey a sense of nostalgia for the tactility and aesthetic power of a physical book and for a centuries-old tradition of beautiful lettering."
—Fast Company
“Vibrant, minimalist new typographic covers…. Bonus points for the heartening gender balance of the initial selections.”
—Maria Popova, Brain Pickings
"The Penguin Drop Caps series is a great example of the power of design. Why buy these particular classics when there are less expensive, even free editions of Great Expectations? Because theyre beautiful objects. Paul Buckley and Jessica Hisches fresh approach to the literary classics reduces the design down to typography and color. Each cover is foil-stamped with a cleverly illustrated letterform that reveals an element of the story. Jane Austens A (Pride and Prejudice) is formed by opulent peacock feathers and Charlotte Brontes B (Jane Eyre) is surrounded by flames. The complete set forms a rainbow spectrum prettier than anything else on your bookshelf."
—Rex Bonomelli, The New York Times
"Drool-inducing."
—Flavorwire
"Classic reads in stunning covers—your book club will be dying."
—Redbook
Synopsis
It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps, a new series of twenty-six collectible and hardcover editions, each with a type cover showcasing a gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet. In a design collaboration between Jessica Hische and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, the series features unique cover art by Hische, a superstar in the world of type design and illustration, whose work has appeared everywhere from Tiffany and Co. to Wes Anderson's recent film
Moonrise Kingdom to Penguin's own bestsellers
Committed and
Rules of Civility. With exclusive designs that have never before appeared on Hische's hugely popular
Daily Drop Cap blog, the Penguin Drop Caps series debuted with an 'A' for Jane Austen's
Pride and Prejudice, a 'B' for Charlotte Brönte's
Jane Eyre, and a 'C' for Willa Cather's
My Ántonia. It continues with more perennial classics, perfect to give as elegant gifts or to showcase on your own shelves.
P is for Proust. Swann's Way is one of the preeminent novels of childhood: a sensitive boy's impressions of his family and neighbors, all brought dazzlingly back to life years later by a taste of a madeleine. It also enfolds the short novel "Swann in Love," an incomparable study of sexual jealousy that becomes a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure in In Search of Lost Time. The first volume of the work that established Proust as one of the finest voices of the modern agesatirical, skeptical, confiding, and endlessly varied in his response to the human conditionSwann's Way also stands on its own as a perfect rendering of a life in art, of the past recreated through memory.
Synopsis
Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America?s greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as blackspine Penguin Classics featuring eye-catching, newly commissioned art. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influential books
East of Eden, Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Long Valley, The Moon Is Down, The Pastures of Heaven, and
Tortilla Flat. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers?and to the many who revisit them again and again."
Synopsis
Steinbeck's tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society, dependant on one another for both physical and emotional survival
Published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is: both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Drawing on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, including longtime friend Ed Ricketts, Steinbeck interweaves the stories of Doc, Dora, Mack and his boys, Lee Chong, and the other characters in this world where only the fittest survive, to create a novel that is at once one of his most humorous and poignant works. In her introduction, Susan Shillinglaw shows how the novel expresses, both in style and theme, much that is essentially Steinbeck: scientific detachment, empathy toward the lonely and depressed
and, at the darkest level
the terror of isolation and nothingness.”
For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Synopsis
It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps, a new series of twenty-six collectible and hardcover editions, each with a type cover showcasing a gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet. In a design collaboration between Jessica Hische and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, the series features unique cover art by Hische, a superstar in the world of type design and illustration, whose work has appeared everywhere from Tiffany and Co. to Wes Anderson's recent film
Moonrise Kingdom to Penguin's own bestsellers
Committed and
Rules of Civility. With exclusive designs that have never before appeared on Hische's hugely popular Daily Drop Cap blog, the Penguin Drop Caps series debuted with an 'A' for Jane Austen's
Pride and Prejudice, a 'B' for Charlotte Brönte's
Jane Eyre, and a 'C' for Willa Cather's
My Ántonia. It continues with more perennial classics, perfect to give as elegant gifts or to showcase on your own shelves.
S is for Steinbeck. Unburdened by the material necessities of the more fortunate, the denizens of Cannery Row discover rewards unknown in more traditional society. Henry the painter sorts through junk lots for pieces of wood to incorporate into the boat he is building, while the girls from Dora Floods bordello venture out now and then to enjoy a bit of sunshine. Lee Chong stocks his grocery with almost anything a man could want, and Doc, a young marine biologist who ministers to sick puppies and unhappy souls, unexpectedly finds true love. Cannery Row is just a few blocks long, but the story it harbors is suffused with warmth, understanding, and a great fund of human values. First published in 1945, and drawn from Steinbeck's memories of real inhabitants of Monterey, California, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it isboth the loneliness of the individual and the exuberance of community.
About the Author
Marcel Proust (18711922) spent his twenties as a conspicuous society figure, but after 1907 he rarely emerged from a cork-lined room in his apartment where he devoted himself to the composition of
In Search of Lost Time.
Lydia Davis has been a MacArthur Fellow, National Book Award finalist, and Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. Davis was awarded the 2003 French-American Foundation Translation Prize for her translation of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way. She lives near Albany, New York.
Jessica Hische is a letterer, an illustrator, a typographer, and a web designer. She currently serves on the Type Directors Club board of directors, has been named a Forbes Magazine "30 under 30" in art and design as well as an ADC Young Gun and one of Print Magazines "New Visual Artists". She has designed for Wes Anderson, McSweeney's, Tiffany and Co, Penguin Books, and many other clients. She resides primarily in San Francisco, occasionally in Brooklyn.