New personal rule: If you didn't like Candyfreak, I don't think we can be friends.
An illustrative page from Amazon.com:
[one star]No Almond Joy in this Book, June 2, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
I have read this pablum and feel I am owed the 4 hours it took to read. Mr Almond please send me a refund. Your political diatribes overshadowed some marginal writing about the candy industry. Your own paranoia about the Republican party and politics in general were as distastful as an Almond Joy candy bar. But the Almond Joy, tag line "Sometimes you feel like a nut, Sometimes you Don't" is applicable in this instance. If you want a better read on the candy industry read Emperors of Chocolate.
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[infantile, demanding cretin from the personal responsibility party thinks he's owed something for his time]
3 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
[one star] Has some shining candy moments but please, no politics, June 1, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
The parts about candy are fun but I can't believe the author became political and stupidly at that, while also condescending to candy eaters. A shame.
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[it's just sad, what it is, to become political and stupdily]
--snip--
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
[five stars] such sweet sorrow, May 27, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
The writer Steve Almond once toiled, many years ago, at a small newspaper on the literal edge of empire -- the dusty Texas-Mexico border. That is where I first met him. And that is where I first noticed his strange obssession with candy. Drifts of Hershey's foil wrappers and yellow Milk Dud boxes invariably smothered his already none-too-tidy work station. Deadline comforts, I presumed. But with the publication of his excellent new book "Candyfreak", a deeper truth is revealed: For Steve, candy is one of our last assured paths to authentic feeling. In a culture drowning in useless information, awash in cheap entertainment, and numbed by ersatz joy and grief, what could be a more important message?
Almond writes that ". . . (candy) would allow me to reconnect to the single, untarnished pleasure of my childhood. But, of course, there are no untarnished pleasures."
He's wrong, of course. There is the untarnished pleasure of his fine book. Read it.
[couldn't agree more, my friend]
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Speaking of Books
My friend Ray Sweatman, or, as I like to call him, "Billy," has published his first book. Congratters! This calls for champagne, or at least Dales Pale Ale.
