Where to start with John Steinbeck

American novelist, 1902–1968. Won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1940.

Best John Steinbeck book to start with: The Grapes of Wrath (1939), on 10 of the 16 lists it could have made.

Start with Of Mice and Men if you want to try him in an afternoon. It’s a novella, and it’s easy to see why it’s taught in schools. The lists prefer The Grapes of Wrath, and they are right to. It follows a family leaving Oklahoma for California during the Depression, and it won the Pulitzer Prize. It’s long and it’s angry, and it’s worth it. Its chapters alternate between the family and short, wider pictures of the country, which gives it the feel of a documentary.

Cannery Row sits well between the heavy ones. It’s a short, warm, funny book about a street of misfits in Monterey, and you should read it before its sequel, Sweet Thursday, which followed in 1954, almost a decade after the original in 1945.

Save East of Eden for later. It is the longest of the five, it follows two families across generations, and it rewards the time. If you’ve liked the shorter books, it’s the natural next step.