Get Thee to a Bakery

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Get Thee to a Bakery

Essays

Rick Bailey

228 pages

Paperback

March 2021

978-1-4962-2551-1

$19.95 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

March 2021

978-1-4962-2563-4

$19.95 Add to Cart
eBook (EPUB)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

March 2021

978-1-4962-2561-0

$19.95 Add to Cart

About the Book

Get Thee to a Bakery is a collection of short, tart essays that explore both humorous and harrowing aspects of growing older and making sense of social, technological, and environmental change. Topics range from earworms and industrial eggs to peaches and personal data, from bug die-offs to algae blooms and global warming, and from beards and yoga to the irrepressible American smile.

Many of these essays make discursive moves into science and literature, framing issues and conflicts that resonate in contemporary American life. With a conversational style, distinctive voice, and great comic timing, Bailey entertains and surprises.
 

Author Bio

Rick Bailey is a retired English instructor who taught writing for thirty-eight years at Henry Ford College in Michigan. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Enjoy Agenda: At Home and Abroad (Nebraska, 2019) and American English, Italian Chocolate: Small Subjects of Great Importance (Nebraska, 2017).
 
 

Praise

"[Get Thee to a Bakery] is a masterclass in how to make art out of the quotidian."—Rachel Rueckert, Fourth Genre

"Rick Bailey's essay collection is rich and refreshing, fun and jubilant, and an overall joy to read."—Stephanie Nesja, Colorado Review

"I wanted to hang out with Bailey's essays longer than I was afforded. In them, I felt comfort, inspiration, joy."—Jody Gerbig, Brevity

"Whether you love to people watch, enjoy virtual travelling, enjoy a spot of humour, or are simply looking for a great read, this is the book for you."—Susan Keefe, Midwest Book Review

"If Seinfeld was the show about nothing, this collection might be the book about everything."—alkratz.com

“Rick Bailey has a deft comic touch. He can make even a flooding basement or a power outage fascinating and hilarious. The world is a more interesting and far funnier place when seen through his eyes.”—Sharon Harrigan, author of Half

“Rick Bailey writes with a rare blend of intelligence and whimsy. Few essayists convey such joy in being alive. Bailey’s prose is sharp and the essays in Get Thee to a Bakery are as accessible as they are profound.”—Cal Freeman, author of Fight Songs

“Rick Bailey is an epicurean globetrotter, whisking us on a wholly satisfying culinary tour with equal measures of humor and heart. These short meditations on food, wine, music, place, and language are deliciously entertaining, a pleasure on the reading palate.”—Dorene O’Brien, author of What It Might Feel Like to Hope

Table of Contents

1. Get Thee to a Bakery
2. This Body Offers to Carry Us
3. A Minor Memory
4. Con te partirò
5. On Wine Tasting and the Limits of Winespeak
6. Learning to Like It
7. You’re Not Going to Eat That, Are You?
8. Clean Up Your Act
9. Alien Pleasures
10. Ecumenical Meat Loaf
11. Good Eggs    
12. Bombolone, Venus, Boar
13. Speak to Me
14. Do the Work
15. Take the Money
16. Listen to Teresa
17. Anyone Who Had a Heart
18. Drop It
19. Teeth First    
20. Back to Comanche
21. Smitty
22. Still Alive
23. Badass
24. Stand Up
25. Waterful
26. We’re Melting
27. Monsters
28. Fit But
29. Quit It
30. A Suite, a Swim, a Fish
31. Me and Velociraptor and Forrest Gump
32. Rock Me
33. Faces in the Stone
34. Where We Are Was Once a Sea
35. But Why Florida?
36. Coffee Ma’am
37. In Search of
38. The Efficacy of Loud
39. Yoga, Space, and Bragadin’s Skin
40. Don’t Wait
41. Third Eye Seeing    
42. This American Smile