This reality show, created in August 2006 by brothers Jeffrey aka Duff and Willie Goldman, provides an inside-look at a Baltimore bakery, Charm City Cakes.

Curious about the world behind those incredibly amazing cakes, pick up this 300-page volume, Ace of Cakes: Inside the World of Charm City Cakes.

This heavy, slightly cumbersome, 10 x 12-inch scrapbook introduces all of the people who work at CCC including the TV production crew.

Where else can you find the following information:

*Mary Alice met Duff when she  dropped her grandmother’s pearls down the sink,
*persistent Anna plays Scrabble like a grand champion,
*guitarist Geof composes his own songs
*Duff hired Mary Smith because of her sassiness and extra-fine piping skills,
*baker Adam Goldstein once sold produce to Duff,
*their cakes really do taste good, all 50 flavors,
*although edible, fondant is rarely eaten
* employees frequently wash their hands even if their actions are not part of the final show.

Not exactly a cook book, this tell-all volume does include some of the bakery’s more unusual techniques and tools that shape those fabulous cake creations.

What’s a scrap book without pictures: collages of cakes, childhood snaps, bakery diagrams, a cake centerfold, fan mail and much much more.  However, some reviewers complain that there are just too many photos (“overwhelming to the eye”)  and  many are just too small. (Especially the double fold-out spread of seven years of cakes!!)

First and foremost, this book is Duff’s story, his childhood, schooling, founding of CCC and how the reality show originated.  But CCC would not exist with out its creative staff so three pages are devoted to each person. The cast and crew profiles, penned by each individual, ring true in contrast to the stiffness of the network executives.

Here again, reviewers say it’s just too much detail:  “I don’t care to see childhood photos of all the CCC employees nor do I find it entertaining”.

“Unfortunately this book didn’t undergo the same editing process” as the weekly show – 22 minutes culled from 150 hours of video footage.  Granted this hefty coffee table book presents an overload of information, but don’t expect it to read like a novel.  It’s nonfiction, people!!

Ace of Cake junkies will appreciate the comprehensive episode guide on pages 273-297 along with the depiction of the burger, hot dog and fries cake concealed under the drab dust jacket. (Also featured on pp. 212-213 along with its creator, Katherine.)

Bottom Line:  if you enjoy the Food Network show, Ace of Cakes, you’ll find plenty to like in this tell-all volume.

Sometimes the evening will feature the movie version of a favorite book and other times the high point will be a game of trivia drawn from the year’s reading list.

For December ’09, Anne compiled a jeopardy game using information from the following books:

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

84, Charing Cross Road

Wish You Well

The Persian Pickle Club

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Third Angel

Back When We Were Grownups

The categories and the questions were as follows:

The British Isles

1. A channel island between England and France where our August selection took place: (Guernsey Island)
2. The Marks & Company address Helene Hanff sends her reading requests to: (84 Charing Cross Rd)
3. Lucy Green is given a dog while visiting this country:  (Scotland)
4. Biddy, Patch & No No’s mother lives in this country:  (England)
5. The Lion Park Hotel in London plays a big role in this book : (The Third Angel)

Food & Drink

1. Precious Ramotswe enjoys this particular brew:  (bush tea)
2. Rebecca Davitch gets this spilled all over her shoes by her future mother-in-law:  (ham)
3. Dessert was always provided by the weekly hostess of this group:
(Persian Pickle Quilt Club)
4. Will Allenby’s nightly dinner: (chili)
5. Tinned ham and eggs were some of the gifts Helene sent because of this in 84 Charing Cross Rd: (rationing)

Mysteries

1. Besides coal, this other fuel was also discovered in the Cardinal coal mine:
(natural gas)
2. Ella Crooks husband Ben disappeared and was found here: (buried in a field)
3. The problem with Michael Macklin’s room on the 7th floor of the Lion Park Hotel: (haunted/ghost -of Teddy Healy)
4. Mma Makutsi figures out that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s house is being used as this: (illegal bar – shebeen)
5. Mma Ramotswe’s secret that she can’t bring herself to tell anyone:
(she thinks she is still married to her 1st husband)

Friends, Relatives & Others

1. Mma Ramotswe’s office manager proudest achievement:
(97% on her final exam from Botswana Secretarial College)
2. Louisa Mae & Oz Cardinal go to live with this relative when their parents died:  (great-grandmother)
3. Juliet & Dawsey decide to do this:  (get married)
4. How Helene Hanff and Frank Doel kept in touch:  (letter writing/post/mail)
5. The gift Zepha leaves for Queenie when she and Blue leave suddenly:
(Quilt- called Road to California)

Name That Book

Identify book by location

1. Takes place in Appalachia – (Wish You Well)
2. Kansas – (Persian Pickle Club)
3. New York and London – (84 Charing Cross Rd)
4. Baltimore – (Back When We Were Grownups)
5. Botswana – (In The Company of Cheerful Ladies)

Note: Elly won the prize for the most correct answers.

** To facilitate this year-end trivia bash, refer to the discussion questions distributed monthly.

What does your bookclub do for fun?

***Thanks to Anne for sharing the jeopardy book trivia with my readers!!

Hard to believe isn’t it that the 1849 death and subsequent burial of Edgar Allan Poe drew such little attention?  Reports say that most friends and followers did not learn of the funeral proceedings until the following day.

To rectify this grave injustice and commemorate the bicentennial of the author’s birth, the Baltimore Poe Society staged an elaborate reenactment complete with:

• an 11-hour, public, open-casket viewing in his former home at 203 North Amity Street for a $5 fee.
• an all-night vigil at Poe’s Monument, Westminster Graveyard, where literary fans  paid homage to the deceased through words, poetry or song.
• a horse-drawn hearse processional from Amity Street to Westminster Hall,  led by the Loch Raven Pipes and Drums.
• hundreds of spectators, many in appropriate period attire, lining the streets to pay tribute.
• two, 2 1/2 hour services, 12:30 and 4:30 p.m., to accommodate the vast number of mourners; 600-700.  The cost was $35 in advance and $40 at the door with no SRO or children under 10 allowed.

Best known for his role of the original Gomez Addams, John Astin, officiated at both services. An esteemed Poe researcher, Astin heads up the John Hopkins theater department.

Poe biographer and rival Rev. Rufus Griswold was forced from the podium after referring to the master of the macabre as a “carping grammarian”.

Griswold scowled and muttered through the rest of the proceedings as Poe admirers from the past and present lauded the originator of the mystery/detective novel and horror story.

Exhibiting obvious paranoia, horror writer H. P. Lovecraft read from the Necronomicon.

Other noted individuals in attendance included: Sir Alfred Hitchcock, legendary film director;  Walt Whitman, American poet; Sarah Helen Whitman, former fiancee; Nathanial Parker Willis, loyal friend; J.T.L.Preston, childhood friend; Charles Bauldelaire, French writer;  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes; Mark Redfield, actor and filmmaker.

Actual footage of the reenactment can be found at the following links:

NPR

BBC

FOXBaltimore

http://mouseski.blogspot.com/2009/10/into-region-of-shadows.html

Poe grew up, fell in love, married, penned his first poems and started his literary career in Richmond, VA.  Information regarding Poe’s life in Virginia can be found here.

Five Poe myths debunked here by Dante Club author, Matthew Pearl.

*Thanks to my niece, Amy, for her eye-witness account of the event.

” Programs, here! You can’t tell the players without a program!”

Just like the avid baseball fan, readers of Back When We Were Grown Ups would  appreciate a program or even a score card to keep track of the sheer number of characters strolling in and out of Anne Tyler’s 15th book.

First off, the jovial Joe Davitch married Tina and begat three daughters:

1. Bridget (Biddy)
2. Patricia (Patch)
3. Elinor (NoNo)

As the novel opens, we meet Rebecca (Beck) Davitch, 53, a dimpled grandmotherly type whose loose style of dress resembles that of a bag lady.

Widowed at 25, this proprietress of a 19th century Baltimore row house/party rental, inherited a ready-made family when Tina abandoned Joe and their three children for a career as a New York night club singer.

The eldest Davitch daughter, a  part-time nutritionist who dreams of being a gourmet chef, habitually refuses to taste her own concoctions for the Open Arms clientele. With her fiance’ dead of an asthma attack, the newly pregnant Biddy, 20, moved in with his gay brother.

Together, she and Troy have parented Dixon, the black-haired, brown-eyed heart throb who waits tables and aspires to attend John Hopkins.

The middle daughter, a gym teacher with a sharp freckled face and chopped black hair, looks and acts 14.  She and husband, Jeep, the big-footed runner have produced three children of their own.

1. Danny, a natural athlete
2. Emmy, the long-legged pixie
3. Meredith, an exact replica of Patch

When the youngest, tiniest and prettiest stepdaughter marries corporate lawyer, Barry Sanborn, she becomes the mother of Peter, 12, whom Tyler describes as a puny runt of a boy.

Before Joe’s untimely death at 38 in a freak car accident, he and Rebecca produced a fourth daughter, Minerva aka Min Foo.

Her children include:

1. Joey, 8, the product of her union with Drake, a 60-year-old college professor who has since moved to a Greek Island.
2. Lateesha, 4, the offspring of her African-American husband, LaVon, an aspiring musician who teaches fourth grade.
3. Baby Abdul, the son of her present husband, cardiologist Hakim Abdulazim.

Is your head spinning yet?  Then add in Poppy (Paul Davitch) Joe’s almost 100-year-old uncle of the white bushy mustache and college degree who lives with Rebecca.

Plus, there’s Zeb, Joe’s younger brother, a gangling, bespectacled pediatrician who may or may not be a love interest for Beck. After all, they call each other every night before going to bed, alone.

Feeling that life had passed her by, Beck reconnects with her college sweetheart, Will Allenby, head of the physics department of a local university.  But Rebecca’s futile attempts to rekindle their bygone romance fails and she rejects him for a second time. (How could anyone eat chili seven days a week for dinner?)

In the end, the matriarch of the Davitch family accepts her role as the go-to person, the problem solver and moves forward from that point.

Readers of Back When We Were Grownups will discover a  well-crafted character study of a large dysfunctional family.  The plot meanders along, rises to the celebration of Poppy’s 100th birthday and flat lines after that.  Nothing of great importance happens, and for that reason, some may rate Tyler’s novel as boring.

However, others describe her work as a superb chronicle of ordinary life, the tiny daily events which fill our waking hours. Beck Davitch is as familiar as our next-door neighbor or best friend.

One reviewer thought that the opening line:

“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”

hinted at great life-changing events that never found their way into the novel’s narrative.

A complete listing of Tyler’s novels can be found here.

Discussion Questions for Back When We Were Grownups can be found at this link.