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Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America (平装)
by Steve Almond
| Category:
Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Business success, Corporate history |
| Market price: ¥ 148.00
MSL price:
¥ 128.00
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Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 5 items |
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Amazon.com (MSL quote), USA
<2008-02-26 00:00>
Picture a magical, sugar-fueled road trip with Willy Wonka behind the wheel and David Sedaris riding shotgun, complete with chocolate-stained roadmaps and the colorful confetti of spent candy wrappers flying in your cocoa powder dust. If you can imagine such a manic journey - better yet, if you can imagine being a hungry hitchhiker who's swept through America's forgotten candy meccas: Philadelphia (Peanut Chews), Sioux City (Twin Bing), Nashville (Goo Goo Cluster), Boise (Idaho Spud) and beyond--then Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America, Steve Almond's impossible-to-put down portrait of regional candy makers and the author's own obsession with all-things sweet, would be your Fodor's guide to this gonzo tour.
With the aptly named Almond (don't even think of bringing up the Almond Joy bit - coconut is Almond's kryptonite), obsession is putting it mildly. Almond loves candy like no other man in America. To wit: the author has "three to seven pounds" of candy in his house at all times. And then there's the Kit Kat Darks incident; Almond has a case of the short-lived confection squirreled away in an undisclosed warehouse. "I had decided to write about candy because I assumed it would be fun and frivolous and distracting," confesses Almond. "It would allow me to reconnect to the single, untarnished pleasure of my childhood. But, of course, there are no untarnished pleasures. That is only something the admen of our time would like us to believe." Almond's bittersweet nostalgia is balanced by a fiercely independent spirit--the same underdog quality on display by the small candy makers whose entire existence (and livelihood) is forever shadowed by the Big Three: Hershey's, Mars, and Nestle.
Almond possesses an original, heartfelt, passionate voice; a writer brave enough to express sheer joy. Early on his tour he becomes entranced with that candy factory staple, the "enrober"- imagine an industrial-size version of the glaze waterfall on the production line at your local Krispy Kreme, but oozing chocolate--dubbing it "the money shot of candy production." And while he writes about candy with the sensibilities of a serious food critic (complimenting his beloved Kit Kat Dark for its "dignified sheen," "puddinglike creaminess," "coffee overtones," and "slightly cloying wafer") words like "nutmeats" and "rack fees" send him into an adolescent twitter.
...the Marathon Bar, which stormed the racks in 1974, enjoyed a meteoric rise, died young, and left a beautiful corpse. The Marathon: a rope of caramel covered in chocolate, not even a solid piece that is, half air holes, an obvious rip-off to anyone who has mastered the basic Piagetian stages, but we couldn't resist the gimmick. And then, as if we weren't bamboozled enough, there was the sleek red package, which included a ruler on the back and thereby affirmed the First Rule of Male Adolescence: If you give a teenage boy a candy bar with a ruler on the back of the package, he will measure his dick.
Candyfreak is one of those endearing, quirky titles that defy swift categorization. One of those rare books that you'll want to tear right through, one you won't soon stop talking about. And eager readers beware: It's impossible to flip through ten pages of this sweet little book without reaching for a piece of chocolate. -Brad Thomas Parsons
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Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2008-02-26 00:00>
The appropriately named Almond goes beyond candy obsession to enter the realm of "freakdom." Right up front, he divulges that he has eaten a piece of candy "every single day of his entire life," "thinks about candy at least once an hour" and "has between three and seven pounds of candy in his house at all times." Indeed, Almond's fascination is no mere hobb - it's taken over his life. And what's a Boston College creative writing teacher to do when he can't get M&Ms, Clark Bars and Bottle Caps off his mind? Write a book on candy, of course. Almond's tribute falls somewhere between Hilary Liftin's decidedly personal Candy and Me and Tim Richardson's almost scholarly Sweets: A History of Candy. There are enough anecdotes from Almond's lifelong fixation that readers will feel as if they know him (about halfway through the book, when Almond is visiting a factory and a marketing director offers him a taste of a coconut treat, readers will know why he tells her, "I'm really kind of full - he hates coconut). But there are also enough facts to draw readers' attention away from the unnaturally fanatical Almond and onto the subject at hand. Almond isn't interested in "The Big Three" (Nestle, Hershey's and Mars). Instead, he checks out "the little guys," visiting the roasters at Goldenberg's Peanut Chews headquarters and hanging out with a "chocolate engineer" at a gourmet chocolate lab in Vermont. Almond's awareness of how strange he i - the man actually buys "seconds" of certain candies and refers to the popular chocolate mint parfait as "the Andes oeuvre" - is strangely endearing.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. |
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AudioFile (MSL quote), USA
<2008-02-26 00:00>
If you're dieting or diabetic, avoid this audiobook. The descriptions of huge machines extruding chocolate bars and the smell of roasting nuts would cause any such person agony until satisfied with a forbidden fix. Oliver Wyman's enthusiasm and ecstasy convey every sensual delight the author intends as he describes extinct and existing candy - its shape, color, consistency, and aroma. Starting with the author's childhood memories of sinful snacks, the story moves to a visit with the world's candy bar expert, the collector of 20,000 confection wrappers and author of two forgotten books. The work also features tours of factories and tasty biographies of the inventors of wonderful sweets we've all had on our tongues. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine - Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine |
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Booklist (MSL quote), USA
<2008-02-26 00:00>
Anyone who has ever really savored a piece of candy and appreciates more than its mere sweetness will sympathize with Almond's obsession. Much of the source of this addiction appears to stem from his psychiatrist father, who had a similar fixation. Then, of course, there is that surname, which his Polish immigrant grandfather took mostly as a way to ensure that he'd sort alphabetically to the top. Whatever its origins, Almond's passion for candy, chocolate or otherwise, leads him to inventory the various sweetmeats he has encountered throughout his life. He attempts to visit candy factories to back up his appetite with fact, but he discovers how very secretive candy manufacturers can be. He does achieve a tour of Pittsburgh's Clark bar factory, and there Almond finds out just how far the freshly made product surpasses the candy bar that has been sitting on a grocer's shelf. The decidedly regional nature of American candy production takes Almond to all sorts of destinations where he encounters those tastefully inventive minds who satisfy the country's sweet tooth. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved |
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Peter Baklava (MSL quote), USA
<2008-02-26 00:00>
For a nostalgist, food comes second only to music in its power to call forth old memories. For example, I remember Bonomo's Turkish Taffy (a 60's confection) with all the fervency that I recall my Red Schoendienst baseball glove, or my Willy McCovey model Louisville Slugger bat.
Steve Almond is a thirty-something guy who has retained his youthful craziness about candy, a mania that set him on a cross-country quest to find surviving, small, independent candy producers - you know, the kind that probably would feel very lucky to be featured on 'The Food Channel'.
He starts with the Necco Company in Boston, takes a detour to visit the author of a standard reference book on American candies, and proceeds westward to investigate and sample such delights as 'Goo-Goo Clusters', 'Valomilks', and 'Idaho Spuds'. At each factory stop, he tours the facility and gives detailed explanations of the candy-making processes, as well as the sublime or strange effects the candies produce on his palate.
Part of the reason for his book, he says, is to lessen the 'disconnect' that Americans have between the product and the producer. Candy consumption differs from region to region within the United States, and what is popular in the South may be virtually unknown in some other part of America.
When you've read (or, consumed) all of this book, you come to the inescapable conclusion that small, determined companies that produce 'candy with character' are one of the things that is wonderfully right about America, even as they labor under pressures that threaten their existence.
Is it too 'pie-in-the sky' to hope for a renaissance in classic candies?
P.S. I tried a Valomilk for the first time, after reading this book. It was worth the publisher's asking price.
P.P.S. I really, really miss Regal Crown Sours.
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1 Total 1 pages 5 items |
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