Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America

Listened to this book while on a long car trip. Loved every minute of it. It's informative and funny. Mostly the latter. The reader does a spectacular job! Every time he describes a candy bar you can see it in detail and almost feel the tastes and pleasures of every bite. Be prepared to stock up on candy if you listen to this treat!

I figured I would be very interested. Like Steve Almond does in the first pages of his book Candyfreak, I must disclose my current candy count: there is roughly a pound of Ghirardelli Dark squares in my desk drawer, a half-dozen Galak white chocolate squares on my desk, two Kit-Kats, some Starbuck's After Coffee Gum someone gave me, and a half pound of local chocolatier Gardener's chocolate covered pretzels in my fridge. I have very little on hand compared to what Almond says he has regularly, but I still know a kindred spirit when I see one. So, by the time I hit page 4 of Candyfreak, I knew I would love it, just reading Almond's ability to synthesize the experience of a candy bar: " . . . the whipped splendor of the Choco-Lite, whose tiny air pockets provided such a piquant crunch (the oral analogue to stomping on bubble wrap)." The book never lets up from there, reveling in candy, particularly chocolate, in Almond's signature sentences which move like referential dervishes. In Candyfreak, Almond parlays his own obsession with chocolate into a quest to seek out the sources and practices of today's chocolate confection, as well as to learn about the forces that have overwhelmed the artistry and pluck of individual chocalatiers into the mechanized behemoth of American mass culture. Throughout, Almond tempers his political urgencies with his own disarming awe and glee at the industry and its products, and he also deals with unfolding family tragedies. His grandfather is dying, while at the same time Almond realizes his lifelong zeal for chocolate both saved his life and "broke his spirit." If it sounds like too much to cram in, perhaps you've not read Almond's ambitious book of sort stories, My Life in Heavy Metal, a book that will give you faith in Almond's ability to multi-task, regardless of genre. Almond's prose packs a sensory wallop at all times. It is also candid, direct, and muscular- he wastes no space. Because of his economy, his writing is akin to the best candy: all good stuff, no fill or the useless air that puffs up the wretched Three Musketeers bar. When he rattles off the names of regional candybars now gone to mass marketers, he says their names are "incantatory poetry." When he says he doesn't like coconut, he says it's like "chewing on a sweetened cuticle." The writing says it: candy, chocolate in particular, for Almond is a passion, a "freak." And like all freaks, Almond has his rage, and the loss of a particular candybar, the Caravelle, and his subsequent despondency and rampage after any sign of it led him to consider the book. Almond meditates on the sources of his "freak," including its lineage. His father's passion for Junior Mints he sees as a thing to awe: "I loved watching him eat these, patiently, with moist clicks of the tongue. I loved his mouth, the full, pillowy lips, the rakishly crooked teeth-the mouth of a closet sensualist." After some consideration of the roots, however, he's off, interviewing confec

As a huge fan of Steve Almond's short story collection, My Life In Heavy Metal, I was initially surprised and maybe a little disappointed to learn that he'd written a non-fiction book. Okay, I thought: Candy. It's an original idea. But what can he say about it that will make me care?Three pages in I was laughing out loud, forcing family and passers by to hear various excerpts, and recollecting my own 1960s candyfreakdom. Any negative reviews you've read here are from humorless types, or else from someone seeking some intensive academic study, which they won't find here. Truth is, you don't have to give an M & M about confectionary history to enjoy this book. Everyone can relate to at least some of it--it's hilarious, thoughtful, and, true to Almond's style, wonderfully written start to finish. Plus, it's a great small size...the literary version of a Chunky bar! I intend to buy a few more copies and share them with family and friends.

Confessions of a candyholic. Steve Almond explores his lifelong love for and obsession with candy as he visits the regional candymakers who are struggling to survive amid the nearly obliterating presence of the big three (Nestle's, Mars, Hershey). Steve brings all of his talents to bear here -- as a reporter, social commentator, and crafter of meticulous sentences that simultaneously deliver humor and brilliant insights. As I read the book, I was sometimes reminded of Tony Horwitz books. Like Horwitz, Steve goes off in search of people who share his obsessions (the Civil War, Capt. Cook in Horwitz's case) and finds a host of interesting characters along the way. As an admirer of Steve's brilliant short-story collection, My Life in Heavy Metal, I was pleasantly surprised to see how well Steve writes about food. He can break down the experience of eating a Charleston Chew, for example, into perfect sensory details without resorting to the pretentious writing of snobbish afficionadoes (a trend he laments with the clever line of "expertise curdling into hauteur"). While reading the book, I went off in search of the Five Star bars which he describes. Unfortunately, the Whole Foods (formerly Bread & Circus) didn't have the Hazelnut he describes in such detail in the book. Now, I'm off to the Web sites Steve offers at the end of the book to get a sample direct from the manufacturer, along with a few others. I can't wait to try to a Twin Bing or Valmomilk. (By the way, jump at any chance you can to have Steve come to your local bookstore for a reading. It's an experience not to be missed.)

Review: From Small Spiral NotebookIn Candyfreak, Almond parlays his own obsession with chocolate into a quest to seek out the sources and practices of today's chocolate confection, as well as to learn about the forces that have overwhelmed the artistry and pluck of individual chocalatiers into the mechanized behemoth of American mass culture. Throughout, Almond tempers his political urgencies with his own disarming awe and glee at the industry and its products, and he also deals with unfolding family tragedies. His grandfather is dying, while at the same time Almond realizes his lifelong zeal for chocolate both saved his life and "broke his spirit." If it sounds like too much to cram in, perhaps you've not read Almond's ambitious book of sort stories, My Life in Heavy Metal, a book that will give you faith in Almond's ability to multi-task, regardless of genre. Almond's prose packs a sensory wallop at all times. It is also candid, direct, and muscular- he wastes no space. Because of his economy, his writing is akin to the best candy: all good stuff, no fill or the useless air that puffs up the wretched Three Musketeers bar. When he rattles off the names of regional candybars now gone to mass marketers, he says their names are "incantatory poetry." When he says he doesn't like coconut, he says it's like "chewing on a sweetened cuticle." The writing says it: candy, chocolate in particular, for Almond is a passion, a "freak." And like all freaks, Almond has his rage, and the loss of a particular candybar, the Caravelle, and his subsequent despondency and rampage after any sign of it led him to consider the book. Almond meditates on the sources of his "freak," including its lineage. His father's passion for Junior Mints he sees as a thing to awe: "I loved watching him eat these, patiently, with moist clicks of the tongue. I loved his mouth, the full, pillowy lips, the rakishly crooked teeth-the mouth of a closet sensualist." After some consideration of the roots, however, he's off, interviewing confectioners, visiting factories and tasting candy fresh out of the "enrober" (a device to which he devotes many fine lines), squirreling away samples, and trying to see what did happen to chocolate in America. The short answer is, well, the same thing that happened virtually to every worthwhile thing from beer to sports: mass distribution, mass advertising, mass culture, mass dumbing down. The short answer doesn't do justice to Almond's work because Candyfreak does what the best creative nonfiction does: reports something in unerring detail, educates about a topic we thought we knew a thing or two about, tells a story both about the author and about the subject, and delivers the whole package in style. Almond's fevered style-known to many from his short stories-here finds a subject about which many folks feel feverish, and the result is one of the most entertaining books I've read in a while. Almond's tries to balance political fantasy and the reality of the