I love Steinbeck. Pure and simple. He seems incapable of lapses in writing and has an uncanny ability to captivate his readers. Okay, he taps into an innate geographical bias. California born and bred, I relish visiting those locales around Monterey and the San Joaquin Valley that Steinbeck describes in his novels. Plus he attended Stanford (a decade or so after my grandparents and sixty years before moi), although he did not finish. For years I have devoured whatever I could find from Steinbeck (whose position in the library is right next to another great writer of the West, Wallace Stegner, but not far enough away from another author who represents the lowest form of literary composition ...a woman named Steele). But I held off reading this book for decades. I suspected it might read like a boring textbook on marine life featuring "Doc" aka Ed Ricketts, puttering around lagoons and tide pools. Au contraire. It's another Steinbeck classic ... plenty of low-life amusing characters straight our of Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row. Some irreverent political commentary. Lurid descriptions of natural beauty. You get a sense of Steinbeck's immersion in a wonderful, simplisitc culture where the beer flows liberally and the days move leisurely. Put the Sea of Cortez on that long list of places to see before you die.

An introspective look at man and how it connects us to the ocean.

My resolution for the year was to travel more, so I thought this book would kickstart my motivation. But from the very beginning, Steinbeck states this is not a book about adventure. It was meant as a scientific study and was in no way supposed to be exciting. What I found instead turned out to be much more valuable.

Steinbeck and marine science? I felt like this book was made just for me. As Steinbeck chronicles his discoveries, he makes comparisons to how we function as humans. He hits tough topics like war, religion and people as a collective. He makes valid points of how connected we are to the ocean. It's an eye opening experience.

Now with that being said, this book is more like a textbook than a literary novel. It was meant as a journal for scientific discovery. Although there are some great thoughts and personal struggles with the Sea Cow, this book also teaches you about different species of ocean life. Being in a working environment with marine animals, it's a bit easier to understand the scientific classifications. But without that prior knowledge, I could see how this book could seem like a struggle for the average reader. This book might seem like a chore, but I found it to be very rewarding when I finished.

Lovers of science and Steinbeck will love this. But for casual readers, maybe steer clear of this one.

This story about a trip collecting specimens of ocean life read like going on a journey. At the beginning I wanted so badly to be on the trip with them, or even to just be among the wives and friends left waiting for them to return. At times I felt I was there, and it was a fun time. Towards the end, I felt "travelworn" as much as the characters did. Throughout, I was simply swept up in the description of all they saw and as much so in the musings on life and reality. There are two narrative voices and they twist around each other, so one wonders from which man's journal each part emerged. As they hypothesize about the features and behavior of the creatures they collect and observe, they turn the analytical eye upon themselves and the crew. Mankind, as a species, with all our self importance, and comedy, and tragedy, becomes a subject of philosophical inquiry, varying in tone from the carnal to the mystical. This book is a ride, and I have not been so jealous of a writer's experience since reading Moby Dick or On the Road. And my scope of thought has been fundamentally changed, widened, by the vicarious adventure.

Had to read this for an ecology course on the Sea of Cortez. In the class we talked a lot about observational science and used Rickett's and Steinbeck's descriptions of the marine life they encountered on this trip as examples. Now-a-days scientists often quaff at the idea of including observational data in their research, but I feel that these descriptions help the reader get a good sense of how things appeared to the writer at the time. Science shouldn't be just all data and numbers. Plus it makes the reading a lot more enjoyable.

On the Sea of Cortez, a much more exotic name (also known as the Gulf of California) seemingly the ideal place for an expedition in marine specimen- gatherings, both John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts need to escape modern life the 1940 version, women trouble. Mr. Ricketts a renowned marine biologist without a degree is the expert, Mr. Steinbeck the famous writer the money man, they hire a sardine boat at Monterey in the Golden State, the 77 -foot Western Flyer, with a colorful crew of four, keep this between us, Steinbeck's wife Carol is the unmentioned seventh member, she will soon shed that title. This narrative may be sometimes dull, too repetitive, ( written unofficially by Mr. Rickets the professional ) when the focus is on obscure species found under rocks and dry beaches during ebb tides, weird creatures unknown to the general public, thousands of them brought back home, which is the reason the book was unsuccessful. However the beauty of the gulf's largely uninhabited shores then , the sparkling blue waters and skies, the tantalizing islands viewed, some the crew landed on and explored, the fish happily jumping out of the warm sea , poor, quiet Indians in their small primitive
canoes visiting the boat, the friendly Mexicans in the Sun drenched little cities welcoming the strangers, millions or billions of living organisms floating, swimming , flying or crawling on both coasts, the Baja California peninsula is 775 miles long, the men on the vessel enjoying each other's company for six weeks and their risque stories, they become comfortable together as the crew, Tony, Sparky, Tiny, Tex, along with John and Ed carefully navigate the lethal shores, full of hidden rocks, treacherous shoals, dangerous currents, high winds, storms that threaten the equilibrium and ; yes it's good to be ...obviously penned by the master John Steinbeck. A mixed bag... those lovers of the sea who I am one will like, but the casual reader or the people that demand a continuous plot from point A to Z... not for them, very technical in spots, even boring yet the jewels will be uncovered and the the treasure discovered by the patient.. . Footnote the great friends had planned another exciting voyage, this time to the remote, freezing Aleutian Islands of Alaska in 1948, a big contrast from the hot deserts of Baja, fate prevented this though by Mr. Ricketts demise in a tragic traffic accident, and Steinbeck's tribute written as a introduction in this book is quite moving, the unstated sadness prevails through the pages of what might have been.

A well written book on a terribly boring subject. Why Steinbeck thought this was a good use of his skills is beyond me. The prologue ("About Ed Ricketts") is at least somewhat amusing, though hardly compelling. If Ed were a friend of mine, it would have been fascinating. But Ed is (was) not a friend mine, nor are the lobsters and starfish which Steinbeck describes with inexplicable fascination. The book contains some philosophy, which might be interesting and challenging for someone whose intellectual development fossilized at Herbert Hoover's Republicanism. Today, it's just a verbose curio.

Having read "Mad at the World," I knew going in that this book by John Steinbeck might be more than a little free with its version of the facts behind the trip that he and Ed Ricketts took to the Sea of Cortez (the gulf between the Baja California peninsula and the coast of Sonora in Mexico) in 1940. But still, I found it enjoyable and exciting. Like a lot of travel writing, this makes time for tangents on philosophy and such, and given that it's Steinbeck, it's done in a masterful, rarely ponderous prose.

Somehow this one got under my Steinbeck radar but I am glad I discovered it. Another worthy read by the master.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is John Steinbeck on his relationship with Ed Ricketts. Steinbeck brings to bear his unique stylings to this account of a specimen gathering trip from Monterey Bay to Mexico. As he does, he breathes life into crustaceans and outboard motors alike, turning them into cognizant beings as wily and irascible as any human you know. My favorite part about reading this was discovering just how real "Doc" from Cannery Row apparently was. Steinbeck hardly had to fictionalization Ricketts at all to come up with his quirky scientist in one of his most memorable novels.

An interest in either Baja or Steinbeck may be good before reading this book, though you may develop that during. The appendix about Ed Ricketts was my favorite part.

John Steinbeck is mostly known for “Grapes of Wrath” or “Of Mice and Men,” so I was surprised to hear about this one. This is a nonfictional account of Steinbeck and his biologist friend Ed Ricketts traveling down the southern parts of California and collecting various sea specimen in that region. It was tedious for me to read their repetitive day-to-day expedition hunting and preserving, and while Steinbeck’s random philosophical input did bring some interesting points, it wasn’t enough for me to feel gratified finishing the book.

When I began reading this book I was reminded of Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. It's the same genre -- travel with a lot of philosophical musing thrown in.

Most of the book is a description of a voyage to the Gulf of California. John Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts was a marine biologist, and they chartered a fishing boat to collect specimens of marine invertebrates. There is an appendix, Steinbeck's memoir of his friend Ed Rickett's.

I found it interesting because it's a part of the world I knew nothing about, and after reading the book I know a little more, at least about what it was like 70-odd years ago. And in the process I learnt something about marine biology; most of what I knew about that was from bed-time stories my father read me when I was 3 or 4 years old from his biology text books. Who needs extra-terrestrial monsters when you can have a sea urchin? That caused me problems in my later reading when I came across descriptions of children as urchins -- were they all spiny?

As for the philosophy, I'm not sure if I understood it all. I think Steinbeck was coming from a completely different place, with different assumptions. He seemed to be anti-teleology, and to think that there is too much teleology in the world, but he seemed to see it in a quite different context.

Some of his comments were interesting, but some seemed to make little sense.