Sweet Thursday is of course the second and last of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row books. In my review of Cannery Row, I wrote that Cannery Row was "One of my favorite comfort reads" in high school, and by that I meant both books. It had been almost fifty years since I read them, so as my final literary act of 2022 I re-read both. I am pleased to say that they lived up to my rosy memories.The most surprising thing about Sweet Thursday is how different it is from Cannery Row. Both take place on the street Cannery Row in Monterey, California. The central character of both books is marine biologist Doc. Other important characters are the indigent inhabitants of an old warehouse called "The Place Flophouse", the proprietress and employees of a brothel called the Bear Flag, and the proprietor of a convenience store. Most of these folks are the same in the two books, although the businesses change owners.Why are the two books so different? They were published nine years apart. Cannery Row, published in 1945, is set in the time before World War II. Sweet Thursday published in 1954, is set after the war. A lot changed for Steinbeck in those nine years. Most important, Steinbeck's good friend Ed Ricketts, the real-life marine biologist on whom Steinbeck's character Doc was based, died in an accident in 1948. The Steinbeck who wrote Sweet Thursday was not the same man as the one who wrote Cannery Row.Although Cannery Row is typically called a novel, it isn't really. It's a loose series of stories connected by a common location and characters. It possesses an atrophied something that vaguely resembles a plot, concerned with the matter of giving Doc a party. Sweet Thursday, in contrast, really IS a novel. In fact, it's a romance novel. The romance itself is pretty hokey, but there are unusual elements of the plot. Hazel, one of the bums whom we met in Cannery Row, plays an important role. Also, Sweet Thursday is more joyful than Cannery Row. It's a feel-good book with a feel-good ending.This Penguin Classics edition contains an Introduction by Robert DeMott. Although I read the whole, I confess that I was skimming towards the end. There are also extensive endnotes, many of which I found useful.