forty/fifty-two

Let me start off by saying I read Nigel Slater's cookbooks like they're novels, devouring fifty pages at a time. He is, as I've noted here before, my favorite British cookbook writer. Yes, better than Nigella. I think it's because he has a lot less hype over here, although the Nigella hype seems to have died down a little, now that I think of it. But I still like him better. He has a great down-to-earth style that I really dig.

Anyway, Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger is Slater's memoir about his childhood. Everyone has to have one. I wasn't sure whether to read this or not, because it didn't seem like he had a very pleasant childhood (mother died when he was young, father was abusive at times, stepmother was a little messed up in the head), and I'm just . . . I don't know, delicate or something. So lame, but it's true. Well, the book wasn't as doom-and-gloom as I thought it would be, but I didn't connect with it at all. I know Slater says in the foreword that a lot of people told him that they had similar experiences growing up, that they felt like Slater was writing about their own lives, but I just couldn't get there.

It wasn't that it was badly written, it was just written in a way that you get it or don't. And I think in order to enjoy Toast, you have to get it. And I didn't.

But I'll still buy any cookbook the man puts his name on.