Not that 'CandyFreak' is without social commentary. Also, unlike last year’s selection, Greg Mortenson’s 'Three Cups of Tea,' 'CandyFreak' wasn’t written as a call to service. I mean, there is that part where Almond admits to (gasp!) smoking pot that he stole from his brother as a teen.

Still, some might call 'CandyFreak' a controversial choice for the Rochester Reads program. This, my friends, is a guy I can get behind. Steve Almond claims, after all, to have eaten at least one piece of candy every single day of his life, to think about candy at least once an hour, and to have between three and seven pounds of candy in his house at all times. 'CandyFreak' is, as you might’ve guessed, a book about candy written by a guy who loves candy. (For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, Rochester Reads is a program in which we - the citizens of Rochester - read. Which is one of the reasons I was excited that 'CandyFreak' was chosen as this year’s Rochester Reads pick. I squealed, 'It’s raining M&Ms!' (Which eventually morphed into 'It’s raining Mmms!' to the tune of 'It’s Raining Men.' It should also be said that I was alone in the house.) Now, a reasonable person might swear or holler or, at the least, stomp her way to the broom closet. Standing on my tiptoes, I gripped the edge of the bag to pull it off the shelf … and a shower of M&M’s came cascading down onto the floor and rolled in twelve different directions, including that impossible spot between the oven and the refrigerator. I was reaching way up to the top shelf of my pantry, behind the flour and the corn starch and the balsamic vinegar, in search of the family-size bag of M&M’s I hide there. Something happened the other day that pretty much sums up my philosophy of life.

Candyfreak