Dear Reader

Welcome to BookCrossing and thanks for being a part of World Book Night 2011, the largest book giveaway in history. 1,000,000 specially printed copies of 25 different books changed hands on March 5th 2011 and began their journey from reader to reader. This book is one of them. World Book Night has joined with BookCrossing to help track these books as they travel. You can be a part of that journey by making a comment in the book's journal here on BookCrossing. Your journal entry can say how you got the book, what you thought of it, your plans for it or whatever else you might like to add.

On BookCrossing you may choose to remain anonymous or join (it's free). If you join, you’ll be alerted by e-mail each time someone makes another journal entry for this specific copy of this book (other copies of the book are travelling with their own ID number. Every copy of every book has a unique ID). It’s all confidential (you’re known only by your screen name and no one is ever given your e-mail address) and spam-free.

Thanks in advance for being part of World Book Night and BookCrossing. And happy reading and sharing.

This book is being released via BookCrossing on 5 March 2011 as part of the inaugural World Book Night. With the full support of the Publishers Association, the Booksellers Association, the Independent Publishers Guild, the Reading Agency with libraries, World Book Day and the BBC, one million books will be given away by an army of passionate readers to members of the public across the UK and Ireland.

Read and release!

I bought this book from the Age UK charity shop in Skipton this afternoon during a pleasant, but rather wet, afternoon out in the Dales!
As a World Book Night Giver myself, I'm always pleased to find other WBN editions, particularly copies of books I've not yet read. As I'm trying increase the proportion of non-fiction books I read in comparison with novels, then this one is especially welcome!
I should probably admit that, apart from his having had a memoir chosen as a 2011 WBN book, I have no idea who or what Nigel Slater might be ....

Amazon Editorial Review: "The Sunday Times Bestseller, and the biggest memoir of the year, from Britain's best loved food writer. TOAST is Nigel Slater's truly extraordinary story of a childhood remembered through food. Whether relating his mother's ritual burning of the toast, his father's dreaded Boxing Day stew or such culinary highlights of the day as Arctic Roll and Grilled Grapefruit (then considered somehting of a status symbol in Wolverhampton) this remarkable memoir vividly recreates daily life in sixties surburban England. His mother was a chops-and-peas sort of cook, exasperated by the highs and lows of a temperamental AGA, a finicky little son and the asthma that was to prove fatal. His father was a honey-and-crumpets man who could occasionally go off 'crack' like a gun. When Nigel's widowed father takes on a housekeeper with social aspirations and a talent in the kitchen, the following years become a heartbreaking cooking contest for his father's affections. But as he slowly loses the battle, Nigel finds a new outlet for his culinary talents, and we witness the birth of what was to become a lifelong passion for food. Nigel's likes and dislikes, aversions and sweet-toothed weaknesses form a fascinating and amusing backdrop to this incredibly moving and deliciously evocative memoir of childhood, adolescence and sexual awakening."

If I hadn't been collecting World Book Night editions, I doubt that I'd have read this autobiography, especially as the author's name meant nothing to me, and still doesn't outside the pages of this book, but I'm pleased that I have. It's an interesting account of his growing-up which often took me back to my own youth. I must have been 11 when he was born, so clearly remember the various brands of convenience foods and sweeties, the television programmes etc that he mentions. It's written in short, episodic bursts, a style which I find both good and bad: it makes it easy to dip into, to pick up and put down, but doesn't flow, it's not something you can get lost in!

With the other fundraising books in the porch. Please be prepared to donate the requested 20 pence - thank you!