Cheese Deluxe

by Greg Palmer

CHEESE DELUXE: A MEMOIR, is a collection of mostly true tales of a group of baby boomers in a time of transition. They are high school seniors, full of their own good fortune, bright prospects and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1934733369
• ISBN13: 9781934733363
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: Bennett & Hastings Publishing
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Delightful

What a delightful, pleasant, down to earth read. Greg Palmer invites you to feel as though you are part of the gang, as you travel with him on his adventures. I grew up on Mercer Island 10 years later then Greg. I found this delightful book and 2 days after I recieved it the author passed away. I wish I could have had the chance to tell him how much I enjoyed his stories. What a talented man. He makes you hungry for more then just a cheese deluxe.

Great fun read!

Greg Palmer's sense of humor shines in the book. What a fun way to spend some hours. It's a coming-of-age book that would appeal to any age. Enjoy!

A Quirky Gem of a Book

In Cheese Deluxe, Greg Palmer has woven about a dozen coming-of-age stories into one poignantly comic volume. All the characters in the book are "real characters"--that is, they're a bit quirky and based on Palmer's high school friends. They're all drawn so vividly you feel as if you really know (and care) about them by the end of the book. Many of the stories are laugh-out-loud funny; others make you cheer quietly for the underdog. And then there are the unexpected heartwarming moments that grab you by the throat and make you pause and truly savor what William Saroyan called the human comedy. Don't miss the stories about the oboe player and his burger-eating cat and the gypsies who come to town with the carnival.

Poignant and hysterical

Those of us who live in the Seattle area have been savoring Greg Palmer's wit and pithy insights for years on radio, television, and in print. True to form, Cheese Deluxe, his roman à clef memoir of a lost time and place (1965, the Samoa Drive-In, Mercer Island, Washington) is by turns hysterical and poignant. Palmer conjures a world of adolescents brilliant and dim, naïve and precocious, sex-obsessed and unwillingly celibate, all lumped together as "underachievers" in the tacky booths of the Samoa. This book is laugh-out-loud funny, a la David Sedaris. But the acuteness of Palmer's memories prevent him from wallowing in the warm bath of nostalgia. Instead, the yearning, confusion, earnestness, and bizarre adventures of adolescence suffuse every page. His outlandish characters stumble through their strange days in an odd suburb during an in-between time. This was the last Mercer Island High School class before drugs and Vietnam took center stage. Beyond the quest for beer, a quest for a stimulating and authentic adult life was launched by a cadre of remarkable teachers. This provocative foundation had wide-ranging consequences. After all, Barack Obama's mom was a graduate.

Cheese Deluxe

Cheese Deluxe This is a book of lively, often hilarious stories from a year or two in the 60's during which the author (as a teen) flipped burgers at the local teen hangout in Mercer Island, Seattle. It is really about people, their foibles and blunders and acts of greatness. The author has such an open-minded, intelligent and humor-filled outlook, that it made me want to read all of his books, no matter what the subject. Greg Palmer sees and writes with intelligence, humor, and heart, and I feel priveleged to have him share this slice of his life with us.