Candyfreak

Book #11 for the reading challenge was Steve Almond's fantastic Candyfreak book. After a number of so-so books, this was a super refreshing read. It reminded me of some of Bill Bryson's best work - with an intermingling of fact, memoir, and travelogue. Mr Almond has a little too much personal information of the "too personal" in this book for my tastes, but he more than makes up for rather unfortunate TMI-age with excessively detailed descriptions of candy bars :)

The book is a really nice overview of the candy industry, which is broken into two planes - the big three (Mars, Hershey's, and Nestles) and then all the smaller boutique candy makers. He gives an overview of the history of the big three as well as a sampling of general candy economics, and then does a series of visits to boutique candy makers.

I finished reading with my mouth watering for all the various candy bars he described in such lovely detail. My next project, since the reading challenge seems to be coming along nicely, is going to be to procure each of the bars so lovingly described in his book, eat them, and write about how wonderful they all were.

If you want to play along, here are links to all the important candy makers or other candy resources that Mr Almond lists in the book:

General candy store: www.candydirect.com, www.sweetnostaligia.com
Candy bars featured in the book: Valomilks, the Idaho Spud, GooGoo Clusters, Twin Bing, Five Star Bars, and the Big Hunk.
Test your candy IQ with Name that Cross Section



Too many interesting stats to put in one post - sufficed to say, a fun book well worth the read - especially if you happen to have a sweet tooth.