CANNERY ROW

What a lovely, lovely evening - Room is such a pleasant place to dine that we should probably return in the near future. Lovely meal and reasonable prices - well done, Vicki, for suggesting it and bad girl, Vicki, for staying at home playing with the electrician.



And well done, Jean, for suggesting Cannery Row, and bad girl, Jean, for having a dodgy (nearly put doggy!) tum and not coming along.



We can safely say that almost everyone loved the book. We agreed that the writing was so clever, easy to read and really evoking the leisurely pace of what was then small town Monterey. There's magic in Steinbeck's prose, cats 'dripping over fences and slithering like syrup to the ground' in the early morning 'the hour of the pearl..when time stops and examines itself''. Wonderful.

The characters were so engaging; even though Mack and the boys were 'scallys', they seemed quite pleasant, straight forward bums with good intentions, like the girls from Dora's whorehouse. Having to live in an abandoned boiler, or sleeping in the pipes, though obviously necessitated by poverty, were described humorously, and I really defy anyone to read the chapter on catching the frogs without laughing out loud, particularly the part about some of the outraged frogs leaving the country as a result of the novel methods of catching them. All in all, a jolly good book with exceptional scores which were:

8 points from Andrea, Julia, Lorraine and Dulcie, 8.5 from Lisa (well, she always has to be different because she's a blonde muffin), 9 from Erica, Kate, Sue and me, with a whopping 10 from Jean, making 86.5 out of 100.

NEXT MEETING - THURSDAY 19 JULY at The Market Restaurant, 6.30pm. It's a special offer as Andrea will no doubt explain in due course but she has booked for 12 people so please let her know (or me) if you will be attending. We did a quick check last night and I think most of us were ok for that evening, we just need to hear from the rest of you.

NEXT BOOK - IF THIS IS A MAN by Primo Levi, recommended by Jonathan.

You may note that I've managed to change the appearance of the blog and have added - I hope - Jonathan's blog and Dulcie's blog as links so that you can switch back and forth as you jolly well please. (Think I have managed to follow instructions, Dulcie, and yes, I agree - coffee next week if you are free!)

Lovely to see you all ladies. Hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as I did.

Lots of love
Nanny x