In-Store: Sarah Perry: Sweet Nothings w/ Forsyth Harmon

Event guidelines:

• All attendees are strongly encouraged to wear a face mask at all times.
• Tickets are limited to restrict capacity at our store, and each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the talk.
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/UQSHgXwH-SY
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A fun, sophisticated illustrated collection of essays that catalogs the simple and not so simple pleasures of the eclectic world of candy from the award-winning author of After the Eclipse.

A taxonomy of sweetness, a rhapsody of artificial flavors, and a multi-faceted theory of pleasure, Sweet Nothings is made up of one hundred illustrated micro essays organized by candy color, from the red of Pop Rocks to the purple Jelly Truffle in the Whitman’s Sampler. Each entry is a meditation on taste and texture, a memory unlocked. Everyone’s favorites—and least favorites—are carefully considered, including Snickers and Trader Joe’s Peanut Butter Cups, as well as the benighted Good n’ Plenty and Werther’s Originals.

An expert guide and exquisite writer, Sarah Perry asks such pressing questions as: Twizzlers or Red Vines? Why are Mentos eaters so maniacally happy? And how could Edmond sell out his siblings for, of all things, Turkish delight, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? Meanwhile, she rejects the dreaded question posed to all candy connoisseurs: what is your favorite candy? The question itself is flawed—favorite under what circumstances? In what weather? On the road, or at home? In what mood? For candy is inextricably tied to the seasons of our lives. Sweet Nothings moves associatively, touching on pop culture, art, culinary history, philosophy, body image, and class-based food moralism. It challenges the very idea of “junk” food and posits taking pleasure seriously as a means of survival.

Sarah Perry’s pure love of candy weaves together elegiac glimpses of her 90s childhood—and the loss at its center—stories of love and desire. Surprisingly smart and frequently funny, Sweet Nothings is a tart and sweet ode to finding small joys where you can. Yes, even in black licorice.

Sarah Perry is the author of the memoir After the Eclipse, which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Poets & Writers Notable Nonfiction Debut, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. Perry is the recipient of the 2018 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award and was a nominee for the 2024 MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award from the James Beard Foundation. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia University, was the 2019 McGee Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Davidson College, and teaches in the graduate program in creative writing at Colorado State University.

Forsyth Harmon is the author Justine. She is also the illustrator of national bestseller Girlhood by Melissa Febos and The Art of the Affair by Catherine Lacey. Forsyth’s work has been featured in Granta, BOMB, Refinery29, The Believer, and elsewhere. She received both a BA and an MFA from Columbia University and lives in New York.

Host or Publisher Books Are Magic