Booze and Books
Posted by: Keir Graff
I received this link from a number of sources–Book Club Girl‘s Bastille Day pairing of books and French wine–but I kept deleting it. The commercial tie-in turned me off, for starters, and the list just didn’t seem that great, either. The Count of Monte Cristo? Mon dieux!
Then the ever-watchful George Eberhart sent the list to me, with a twist of his own:
Merlot with Les Miserables
Chianti with Petrarch
Mead with Beowulf
Cold Duck with Bukowski
Constantia with Alan Paton
Now that’s more like it! And if we may move beyond fermenting and brewing to the craft of distilling, we could add even more pairings. My brain is running down, but, off the top of my head:
martinis with The Thin Man
bourbon with Faulkner
canned beer with Crumley
vodka with Steinhauer
Now that’s a book group I’d love to join!
July 15th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Please indulge me in a few more:
Absinthe with Baudelaire and Rimbaud (de rigeur!)
Jax Beer with A Confederacy of Dunces
A light Rioja with Don Quixote
Mint juleps with Gone with the Wind
Dandelion wine with Ray Bradbury
Yellow Tail with Arthur W. Upfield
Coke Zero with Sartre’s Being and Nothingness
July 16th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Consider yourself indulged. Any more imbibers out there? I’m going to add “hot toddies with Dickens” due to some ill-remembered scene where his characters drink hot toddies made with mugs of gin warmed by a hot poker.
July 16th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
English Brown Ale or Bitter with any book from the Inspector Morse series by Colin Dexter!
July 17th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Milk with A Clockwork Orange?
July 17th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Good one. Creepy, but good.
July 17th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Melrose Plant (Martha Grimes’ Inspector Jury series) inspired me to try ‘Old Peculier’, a beer which really is best at room temperature.
Amanda Cross’ Prof. Kate Fansler inspired me to try (and like) Laphroaig.
July 17th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Ah, yes, Theakston’s Old Peculier…I remember it well from my time in a bookshop on Charing Cross Road, where I was introduced to it by a Yorkshireman named Simon. Great stuff!
July 18th, 2008 at 7:29 am
how about …
bathtub gin with fitzgerald
bacardi with hemingway
scotch with burns
summer ale with tolkien
vodka with solzhenitsyn and pasternak
July 18th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Oh, I’m saving this post as fodder for the literary cocktail party I’ve always wanted to host. Mint juleps work for Fitzgerald, too, for the scene where they’re all hanging out in Manhattan in Gatsby. And Jack Rose cocktails from The Sun Also Rises. And perhaps a cup of sack in honor of Falstaff.
July 18th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Whisky with Micky Spillane!
July 18th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
[...] in my ALA e-newsletter, there was a link to this post – http://blog.booklistonline.com/2008/07/15/booze-and-books/ – that I thought was a really good idea, and being the wino that I am, thought to challenge myself [...]
July 20th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
How did I miss this post? Here are more:
Drumnadrochit with Lawrence Block’s The Burglar in the Library, or any of the Bernie Rhodenbarr novels (it’s Bernie’s favorite single malt and plays a role in the plot).
Iron Horse champagne with Robert B. Parker (it’s Hawk’s favorite domestic sparkly).
Gimlets with The Long Goodbye (Terry Lennox’s favorite drink)
Plymouth gin with John D. MacDonald (Travis McGee will only drink Plymouth).
And so many more. I’ll get back to you.
July 21st, 2008 at 11:14 am
[...] A Booklist Blog Keir Graff, Booklist Online’s Senior Editor, writes candidly about books, book reviewing, and the publishing industry « Booze and Books [...]
July 21st, 2008 at 11:22 am
[...] of Theakston’s, Stef Penney’s The Tenderness of Wolves (2007) has won yet another accolade: [...]