Review: The Glorious World Cup

Whether a World Cup fan for the first time or following your eleventh competition, The Glorious World Cup, provides a satiric ‘balls-out’ guide to educate, entertain and provide a tongue-in-cheek review as the top thirty-two teams in the world compete for soccer’s greatest prize, the World Cup.

Be it a run down of the teams that will be playing or an individual player profile on some of this year’s more colorful characters in soccer, The Glorious World Cup is there to provide the lurid details, the dirt on the villains, the historical significance in a variety of rivalry matches, and to prepare you to sit back in your armchair at home and cheer on which ever team flies your national colors.

Not since 1066 And All That has history been written with such mockery. The New Jersey attitude that emanates from David Henry Sterry is the same one that gave us Tony Meola and John Harkes and that helped light the way for the many Americans that now ply their trade in Europe.

Will this be the year that the Americans reach the finals or will the tried and true of Europe or South America once again vanquish a traditional foe? Brush up on your knowledge of the World Cup, take a trivia test with The Glorious World Cup and see how you stack up against the rest of the world.

Review: Toast: the story of a boy's hunger

Slater's Toast awoke in me so many past food feelings from my own childhood not just from his sumptuous descriptions of his own past life but because of the proximity our lives shared in the fact that we were raised in towns barely eight miles apart and are within two years of being the same age. The descriptions of past memories of sweets reminded me so much of my childhood, and I think would resonant more with a British audience than American.

My mother, as his, did not enjoy the preparation of food, and while for Slater that led to a life of exploration in food, for me not so much. This is why I enjoyed this book. Not only is it a tell-all tale of a youth hungering for the love of a father that was only occasionally available but one of a life of exuberance, a life that becomes filled with the joy of finding your niche in life and wallowing in it wholeheartedly. If only we all could find that space in our life.

Slater normally writes books on cooking, with recipes, so this was a brave soul-searching stab at v>a new venture that lets us in on why he is so good at what he does.