lord of the pies / sarah davies

Encapsulate the book in one sentence?
Pun-tastic literary recipes.

Intriguing, tell me more.
Well, I mean, that does mostly cover it. A selection of literary-themed recipes, titled with some genius punny titles.

Personal Choice, Book-Pot, Re-read…?
I made my yearly pilgrimage to DeMontfort University’s States of Independence festival, and I always make a point of going to see the current students do their readings from the Publication Project. (The Publication Project is the third year assignment in which students produce a printed book, with the intention being to write for the purpose of publication. It was the origin of mine and Chris Black’s Between The Lines, an experimental novella which will see proper publication sometime shortly!) It’s always nice to see what the new students are doing, and for some reason I relish the sweaty-palm flashbacks to having to do our first nerve-wracking readings as students [number redacted] years ago.

The publications are generally short story or poetry collections, but this year there was a left-field entry that made me dribble into my own hand with laughter (thankfully unseen on the back row) so I promptly bought a couple of copies. The author was handing out free cup-cakes too, which was in no way a contributing factor to my review, but does mean I can confirm the quality of the recipes (if the cup-cakes are anything to go by, anyway.)

What genre would you say it is?
This is quirky niche-gift fodder. Basically, it’s the food version of Tequila Mockingbird. This belongs on the shelves of Waterstones just before Christmas. The puns are hilarious, but the recipes do look equally good (which is actually pretty impressive, because usually the joke is at the expense of the actual content.)

Did you finish it? Did it work for you?
Oh, man, it’s brilliant. Every title is hilarious, and the food looks great. It’s incredibly funny and endearing, and I’m a bit in love with the book. And it’s gotta be said that for what is a student project the production value is on point. This looks like a professional product (which I can attest as someone who know works doing that sort of thing, but once had to put together a publication project like this with the knowledge and resources I had then, that is hard to do.) Serious credit due.

Give me a good quote:
My top five favourite pun-titles:

• Prawn Free
• Chitty Chicken Rendang
• Lady Chatterley’s Liver
• The Handmaid’s Kale
• Sons and Pavlovas

Is it available today?
Um, well, no, probably not. I think the DMU guys print about ten copies so I’ve probably got about 20% of the stock on my desk. But it should be printed! Someone get on that!

Soundtrack of choice: 
Tequila  Mockingbird by Ramsey Lewis. (Although actually I was going to pick Sweet Cold Colation by Professor Elemental because it has lots of cake jokes, but it’s also a bit filthy so I’ll let you search it if you want to, rather than link!)