Book Review with Excuse: Get Thee to a Bakery

This review is late, as is today's non-book post. I have an excuse for this. I received a batch of books within 26 hours. I wanted to post reviews of them in the order they came in. That's not happening; the first book aroused such mixed reactions that its review ran overtime, and then I felt as if the author ought to give informed consent before I posted a complete and honest review. (Briefly, I think it's a good book for some people, susceptible to abuse by and against others.) 

Here is a hastily written review of the next book. Since they came in electronic format all the quotes come from the first quarter of the book, because scrolling takes longer than flipping pages. No worries, though. The book is entertaining all the way.

Title: Get Thee to a Bakery 

Author: Rick Bailey

Date: 2021

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

ISBN:  9781496225610

Length: 228 pages 

Quote: "We exercise, we are not overweight, we are not old exactly. Just beginning to incline . . . old-ward. But there it is, the age-related groan."

Although it's published by a university, this is a light book, suitable for bedside or bathroom reading. Or for reading in a place like the Roberts Family Bakery Cafe, whose patrons stock the coffee table near the front window with light reading such as Cake Wrecks and The Book of Barkley. 

It is a little more scholarly than other collections of light newspaper-column-length essays like Normal Is Just a Setting on Your Dryer, or Down the Seine and Up the Potomac, or Alice Let's Eat. Bailey suggests, for example, that while standing on a ladder he distracts himself from his wife's repeated warnings and his own memories of people falling off ladders by reflecting on pumpkin pie, and specifically on nutmeg. His reflections include recipes translated from French and Italian. Still, they're meant to evoke chortles, and perhaps salivation. They won't be on the test. They are offered just for fun.

Bailey's ancestors are English but his wife's are Italian, so there's a fair bit about Italy in the book. There is an assumption that you are, or will be, or at least enjoy the company of, a person who goes to libraries and reads whole books when he wonders about a "how" or "when" question, who recognizes classical music by title, and who frequently visits friends in countries where Engllish is not an official language. There is also an assumption that you have, or know someone who has, a way to look anything unfamiliar up online, even to download an app that promises to name any tune. Since you're reading this review on a computer this book should be completely accessible to you. Bing even promises to pay you for looking up things like "recording of Andrea Bocelli's 'Con te partiro'," if you're wondering how that song goes, although Bailey warns that it's an earworm.

When a book is likely to provoke laughter I usually pick a few funny lines for readers' consideration. So: 

"I understand tannin but I don’t get pliable. I tell him my mouth is dumb. I’m just not a very good taster. He asks, “Did you like it?” “Yes, I did,” I say, and empty my glass into the spittoon"

"She was from Fano, in the Marches region. (Nearby residents, instead of telling someone to go to [H]ell, tell them to go to Fano.)"

"[T]he issue was what irritates Europeans about Americans who travel abroad. For example: Americans talk too loud, Americans tell what state they come from (people from Michigan, raise your hand). Americans are polite, they smile all the time, they engage total strangers, like cashiers, in conversation. They are fastidious about finding trashcans. They require lots of ice."

"'Salmonella...causes about 450 deaths every year.' Evidently there are a lot of bad eggs out there. Unfortunately, they all look about the same."

"They ask me a question. I know it has something to do with soccer. Do I like it? Drawing on one of my lady books, I could say something like: My heart swells and beats faster as our time draws near. Americano! they yell at me, asking me a question about a recent motorcycle race. I have a ready response: In the depths of my soul I knew the answer was yes, yes yes.  Americano! they yell."

If you're smiling, you'll enjoy this book. It also delivers lots of free Italian vocabulary words and several recipe and serving suggestions. And books you might want to read next. And web sites.