[.ca] Candy and Me: A Girl's Tale of Life, Love, and Sugar (ISBN 0743254414)

From Amazon.com:
Hilary Liftin's Candy and Me (A Love Story) is not only a love story, but also the story of an otherwise normal, slender, strong-toothed woman's lifetime obsession with candy and all things sweet. With brutal honesty, Liftin exposes herself as insatiable. As a child she indulged in cups full of powdered sugar mixed with just enough water to make a paste which she ate in front of the TV, and multiple packs of hot chocolate mix, licked from her finger on her way home from school. She is a connoisseur of every candy you've ever tasted or even heard of, and of many candies you've never (and might never) come across. The friendships, love stories, and heartbreaks that make up her life story evolve through tales of candy consumption. Her memories of all major and minor life events are tightly woven with Necco Wafers, Snickers, Bottle Caps, Conversation Hearts, Circus Peanuts, Twizzler, Tootsie Rolls, Fireballs, Nonpareils, and countless others. Either you'll relate a little, or you'll relate a lot. You might be shocked by the volume of sugar she's ingested, but her story is familiar. She's made friends and lost them, she's fallen in love and had her heart broken. And then she's fallen in love again. Liftin's story is as sweet as her candy cache. --Leora Y. Bloom

NOT recommended.:
This is such a dopey, pointless book. Some people want their names in print, regardless of how trivial the reason, and this is a good example of that. Maybe this would have been an okay magazine article but to try and stretch it into a whole book is tedious. You end up saying, who cares, and why did I bother? The author's feeble attempt to link her family history and romantic foibles with her love of candy is basically ridiculous. I can't recommend this book to anyone. Eat some candy instead.

Who Likes Candy?:
If you are a candy-lover you will enjoy this book. It brought back so many memories. I have enjoyed all the candies she mentions and more and loved the nostalgia of reading about treats I have not tasted in years. I especially liked the author giving her friend a shoebox full of candy as a gift. She describes pouring in a large bag of M & Ms "as a base" then burying cellophane wrapped caramels and other treasures. I like the candy holidays of Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter and Mother's Day. In the off months I can just read this book again with plenty of Junior Mints, Smartees, and Bit O' Honey at my side. A sweet book with a taste treat or a memory of one on each page.

This book is a yummy delight!:
A humorous yet at times poignant account of one woman's life, loves, and confectionary favorites, from her childhood addiction to a homemade sugar paste, to junior mints, to Petite Fruits, Jelly Fruit Wedges, and frosting eaten straight from the can (I thought I was the only one who did that!) A factual account that is as entertaining as any fiction story i have come across. I recommend it highly. A real sweetie of a book!

The Truth Never Tasted So Sweet:
Funny, sometimes wistful, and surprisingly thought-provoking. For Hilary and me it's candy; for others it's various substances that fortify and amuse. This well-written self-examination packs a much bigger message than you might expect. I enjoyed reading it while killing a couple of half-pound bars of Cadbury Milk Chocolate.

A Delicious Escape That Makes a Lasting Impression:
Recently, Hilary Liftin told an interviewer that while most readers understand that her book is about memories, they also think it's about candy. (They can be forgiven, can't they? Look at the title, not to mention chapters focused on Skittles and marshmallow eggs.) However, here's a different take: I think Liftin's light but filling (just like circus peanuts) tale is all about taste --- not just the various tastes she describes, but individual taste and discernment. Like the recent COOKING FOR MR. LATTE by Amanda Hesser, Liftin's CANDY AND ME uses a conceit (in Hesser's case, themed recipes; in Liftin's, different eras of candy consumption) to tell a real love story. Unlike Hesser, however, whose book is all about meeting, wooing and cooking for a single person, Liftin takes us through her life and loves. Her early devotion to Bubble Burgers is a mere fling, as is an affaire de coeur with her former camp counselor, Finn; in both cases, anticipation is followed by a short, happy period of consumption and ends with transition. Liftin wisely writes: "One person moves away, or the other gets bored, or they run out of things to talk about. Our desires start young, are unreasonable, and can't be trusted. But there's always another box of Junior Mints." Thus, Liftin always knew what she really wanted --- Junior Mints, Rocky Road ice cream, bottle caps (more on those in a moment) --- and also what she really disliked, such as Mary Janes ("the bane of piñatas"). Yet she still allows herself to be surprised, delighted, disappointed and hurt, both by candy and by boyfriends. A lesser person might have settled early on for the tried-and-true: Hershey's Miniatures and an investment banker. Instead, Liftin holds out for bottle caps and a fellow writer (Chris Harris, author of "the world's first anti-travel guide," DON'T GO EUROPE!). Amazingly, due mostly to good genes, the dizzying amounts of nearly pure sugar Liftin ingests over the course of her thirty-odd years have not rotted her teeth, ruined her waistline, or stunted her intellectual growth. She makes it through Yale on Smarties and through dotcom hell with Skittles. While a child, Liftin devours candy, inhaling packet after packet of dry hot cocoa mix and nipping off the tops of wax bottles like a female praying mantis devouring her partner; as she matures, she candy-hops less frequently, and instead spends her time and effort finding just the right candies in just the right (read: enormous) quantities. Are miniature bottle caps worth the trip? Read on to find out. Youth, they say, is wasted on the young --- but Hilary Liftin seems to be one of those people on whom nothing is wasted. Each mouthful of candy she chews (she prefers the dive-right-in method of candy intake) provides a memory, sure, as her readers have noticed. But the most astute will see that Liftin's soda-pop-flavored, fizzy-textured bottle caps are more than Proustian madeleines. Those dense little disks of sugar also function as diskettes of desire, candy paving stones in a life's highway. Reading CANDY AND ME is a delicious escape that makes a lasting impression. --- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick