most over-rated author of all time

Just okay.......

Streakingly beautiful. The way Steinbeck describes nature -human nature included- is a masterpiece.

It's hard to choose between these two books, as they're both great pieces of literature. I read them as a child, and I can never forget it. Very powerful, but then anything by Steinbeck is wonderful. He is an artist with language. I've read them again, and cried just as hard.

in middle school

A terribly descriptive and depressing account of a boy and his father and their search to express love to each other through the gift of a roan horse. The ending is quite grim...or so it was for me as a teenager. This is a great story for impressionable children.

"He wanted to live in a great heroic time, but there weren't any heroes now"

i've only read the pearl and not the red pony just wanted to be honest.
everyone probably read this book in middle school or high school. me i stole a copy one day while i was subbing at a middle school. i fully intended to give it back but alas i never subbed in that building ever again.
i dont feel bad about this because it seemed like the book had never been opened and it was in a box full of copies of the pearl.
plus those kids were really stupid and i doubt that they could have made it through this book as short as it is.

I am half cheating with this addition because I read "The Pearl" in middle school. Still, from what I remember, these two stories encapsulate many of Steinbeck's literary accomplishments. With "The Pearl," Steinbeck uses more mythical devices, while "The Red Pony" seems to derive from the author's life experience.

there’s such simplicity to these two stories compiled in this slender book. the language is so beautiful even though it is not elaborate, and feelings and actions are common and mundane, but feel almost unique in his words. and then, the natural descriptions! I felt like I was seeing the world for the first time while reading them, be it the clouds disappearing behind a mountain range or smoke rising up from a chimney against a darkening sky, it was all so sensorial!

this was my first Steinbeck read, and I just know I’ll be coming back to him in the near future in the hopes of having such a delightful time just like I had with this one.

p.s.: reading it while listening to Dario Marianelli’s Pride and Prejudice OST and to Nils Frahm’s record Old Friends New Friends made the experience even better!
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“There was no anger in her for Kino. He had said: “I am a man,” and that meant certain things for Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god. It meant that Kino would drive his strength against a mountain and plunge his strength against the sea. Juana, in her woman’s soul, knew that the mountain would stand while the man broke himself; that the sea would surge while the man drowned in it. (...) Sometimes the quality of woman, the reason, the caution, the sense of preservation, could cut through Kino’s manness and save them all.”

4,75/5

a classic

Both stories read like children's stories, but with brutal happenings. Thinly-veiled life lessons in both.