"What kind of pie?"
"Apple." Kote straightened and cut three careful slits into the crust covering the pie. "Do you know how difficult it is to make a good pie?"
"Not really," Chronicler admitted, then looked around nervously. "Where's your assistant?"
"God himself can only guess at such things," the innkeeper said. "It's quite hard. Making pies, I mean. You wouldn't think it, but there's quite a lot to the process. Bread is easy. Soup is easy. Pudding is easy. But pie is complicated. It's something you never realize until you try it for yourself."
--The Wise Man's Fear, Patrick Rothfuss
Patrick Rothfuss is an extraordinary writer. And he's right about pie: It's complicated. So many components can go awry: crust too pasty, filling too gloppy, topping too crunchy.
Enough with the zombie Jane Austen novels. What I really need to see at Barnes & Noble is the pie companion to Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," in which an escaped convict holds a grandmother at gunpoint but instead of killing her, forces her to eat a disgusting pie from Denny's. Who wouldn't want to read that, I ask.