Book burble: Everybody loves chocolate. From Willy Wonka to Ferrero Rocher, the Cadbury's Flake girl to the man from Milk Tray, it is embedded in our culture like no other foodstuff. Depending on who you listen to, it either clogs up your arteries or reduces the risks of cancer; it is the bringer of acne or the 'Prozac of Candy'; it produces the same chemicals in your brain as when you fall in love.

Paul Richardson has had a sweet tooth ever since his grandmother fed him Lindt milk chocolate animals as a boy. Now, in this fascinating new book, he satisfies a lifelong craving by travelling the world to find out the history of this most popular of foodstuffs.

Part travelogue, part cultural history, part literary gastronomy, Indulgence is full of the hilarious, the delicious and the downright bizarre.

INDULGENCE by PAUL RICHARDSON (2003) | ISBN: 9780349115528 | Publisher: Abacus

Stacked with fascinating facts and laced with riviting detail this is a treat for anyone happy to get lost in chocolaty non-fiction!

“It is a journey that begins in the cacao groves of Guatemala and Mexico, and takes him from the old world to the new, to mainland Europe and the chocolatiers of Paris and Zurich, to Britain and America, and the homes of Cadbury and Hershey.

For chocolate lovers everywhere - and let's face it, that's most of us - INDULGENCE is a treat. Witty, insightful and wonderfully readable, this is the tastiest book you'll devour all year, bar none.”

A peppy quote off the internet but I’d have to say this had more interesting depth than I expected; the ageless link between the original producers and users of and their religious life was fascinatingly intriguing, the Aztec society was a theocratic one where the rituals of drinking cacao were intertwined with religious practice; on ethics of production and manufacture the news is disheartening special growing conditions for the highest grades of beans, the protecting cacao trees by a taller forest canopy seems utterly threatened by deforestation, (hope I understood that correctly I read this piecemeal and try as I might cannot find this passage to quote in my haste to create journal notes before releasing this.) Another interesting, well down right arresting, note is that before chocolate drinking was introduced into western culture the only other non-alcoholic drinks were milk and water, that made me stop and think!

OK fascinating as it is this is a book heavily loaded with words. There are few illustrations and few breaks in the text with any helpful wee beginnings or ends, dense prose is a mountain range for many of we folk with dyslexia and despite being an extremely interested chocoholic, I did attempt dipping into this time and time again, this defeated me! High time to pass it on by setting it travelling. Meanwhile, the memory of being introduced to a rich red wine that went superbly well with a dark Valrhona in a winery in France many years ago, will have to remain a precious memory as for the life of me I cannot recall its name. One of the perils of aging which, can of course be alleviated with chocolate – GRIN!

To be wild released at the EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL BookCrossers MeetUp outside the BOOK SIGNING TENT
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Picked up at the Old Gang BookFest meetup - thanks!

Released to obcz

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Retrieved from obcz

Left in the Little Free Library

Although this book is registered at www.bookcrossing.com, you don't have to be a member. It's perfectly OK to just take the book and enjoy it. Of course, if you can visit the website and let us know that you've picked it up, that would be even better - you don't even have to join, you can add your comments anonymously - you can also post your review when you've read it, then return it or pass it on to someone else.

If you do join Bookcrossing, you'll be able to see what happens to it afterwards - for ever!