A Piece of Cake
by Cupcake Brown
★ Top 25 book of 2005 · #22 on Best Books of 2005
This memoir follows Cupcake Brown, orphaned young and placed with a cruel foster parent, as she survives drugs, gangs, hustling and homelessness before turning twenty. It is frank, funny and affecting, tracing her path from hardship to ordinary working life.
Best for: Memoir readers who like raw, funny survival stories of overcoming addiction and hardship
A Piece of Cake is #22 on BookWard's Best Books of 2005, out of 52 2005 books that cleared our data bar.
What A Piece of Cake is about
Cupcake Brown's memoir begins when her mother dies and she is left with a cruel foster parent. To get by, she turned to tricks, hard liquor, and every drug she could find. She hitchhiked up and down the California coast and drifted into gang life, dealing, hustling, prostitution, and theft. She had lived through all of this before she turned twenty.
She later took a string of 9-to-5 jobs, described as the best scam of all. A New York Times bestseller, the book is described by its publisher as moving in its frankness, startlingly funny, and genuinely affecting. It is a story of loss, addiction, and survival, and it may speak to readers drawn to honest accounts of hard lives and of finding a way through.
A Piece of Cake on the Best Books of 2005
A Piece of Cake came out in 2005. Of the 52 books first published in 2005 that met BookWard's data bar, it ranks #22 on our Best Books of 2005 list.
Why it made the list: 226 readers have shelved it on Open Library. The list ranks each year’s books on how many readers have picked them up, how highly readers rate them, and how many are reading them right now.
Nearby on the 2005 list
- Creating Black Americans Nell Irvin Painter, #20
- Midnight Erin Hunter, #21
- 1491 Charles C. Mann, #23
- Code Talker Joseph Bruchac, #24
See all Best Books of 2005 Best books by year
More years: Best Books of 2004 Best Books of 2006.
The numbers behind it
- Readers: 200 want to read it, 12 are reading it now and 14 have read it, according to Open Library.
| Signal | This book (0 to 100) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Reach | 42 | 55% |
| Reader love | 92 | 25% |
| Being read right now | 46 | 20% |
Questions about A Piece of Cake
When was A Piece of Cake published?
A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown was first published in 2005.
Was A Piece of Cake one of the best books of 2005?
A Piece of Cake is #22 on BookWard's Best Books of 2005, out of 52 2005 books that cleared our data bar. 226 readers have shelved it on Open Library.
Why is A Piece of Cake on the Best Books of 2005 list?
226 readers have shelved it on Open Library.
More of the best books of 2005
- The Lightning Thief Rick Riordan, #1
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince J. K. Rowling, #2
- The Glass Castle Jeannette Walls, #3
- Looking for Alaska John Green, #4
- Eldest Christopher Paolini, #5
- Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt, #6
See the full Best Books of 2005, the Top 100, or new books on Rising.
How we know
This page uses public data: Open Library reader counts and ratings, and Wikipedia page views for recent years. The description is paraphrased from real source text. Rankings reflect reading interest, not quality or sales, and can be affected by data gaps. Lists update monthly.
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