To the Lighthouse

This book is considered one of the 100 Best Books of all Time compiled by the Norwegian Book Club.  This only makes sense if there are 128 books in Norway.  Hating a classic like this makes you feel like a cretin.  I would like to think that using the word cretin somehow makes me less of a cretin but that logic falls dangerously close to the Don King Exquisite Vernacular School of Sounding Awesome.

Stream of consciousness books are hard to read.  Its like when  your really cool friend wants to tell you his dream. Yeah, I like you, but no.  I wasn't there, it didn't happen and the way you are telling me that a dragon trying to scorch you as you were flying with Scarlet Johansson is just not working for me. 

To the Lighthouse, written by Virginia Woolf, who notoriously killed herself in kind of a cool way, has no dragons.  None.  Sure she wrote with an innovative technique, sure she captured the interior thoughts of a very dysfunctional family, but it still sucks to read. 

If you must know, the book is about a well-known philosopher father who is a straight up narcissist and his beautiful, co-dependant, busybody narcissistic mother.  They have eight kids.  Now this is where the fiction begins, I grew up the youngest of seven, I NEVER got to read a book alone with my mother and my parents never had a conversation alone between the hours of six a.m. and eleven p.m..  My family's dialog was: Dad: "Whose shoes are these? Pick up these damn things!"  Mom: "Your Dad is pulling in the driveway, clear a path through those Legos so he doesn't trip."  No interior dialogs and no exchanges with triple meanings.

One thing that is interesting about this book is that even though we learn the innermost thoughts of the mother, probably over 100 pages of her mind, minutia, and neurosis, she is summarily killed by a simple parenthetical.  Yes, beware of the parenthetical, because in this book that is where people go to die. 
(Help! I'm being suffocated by this closed parenthetical; Give me a dangling participle as a rope!...glug...glug...glug...dead.) 

Drinks: The good news is that it is set in Scotland. So drink with Scotch.  I like single malt. This is like saying you like diamonds.  Glenlivet's Nadurra is delicious and I like Balvenie too.  There is a whole lot of other Scotch that people have given me to taste but the names sound similar and I get confused.  I know just enough to know that I would read a book called To the Speyside.   

Ready Player One

What if it turns out that all of those hours of playing Atari, watching 80's movies and playing D&D could save the world?  Your Mom yelled at you.  She said, "Get outside, without Vitamin D absorption you'll get rickets!"  You said, "Just one more game!"  Well, the debilitating rickets is finally paying off because the more geeky 80's knowledge you have, the more you will love this book.  I loved it, therefore the logical conclusion is that I must be a geek, at least on some level.  I'm sure you are all shocked.

Ready Player One is set in 2044. Yes, things look a little bleak for most of us then, but we have an online virtual reality presence called OASIS. Kind of like Real Life meets the World of Warcraft.  The original creator dies and leaves his vast fortune to whomever can find all of the Easter Eggs in the program which are based on 80's trivia.  If you were born between 1968 and 1980 you will especially love this book.  Or, you were born outside those years but immediately know the difference between Asteroids and Defender, you'll be fine.  If you do not know what I am referencing when I mention D&D, you may want to pick up The Help, people say they like it.

Is this well written?  Not particularly, but who cares.  Earnest Cline is a true fanboy grown up.  In fact he wrote a screenplay called Fanboys.  Write what you know.  I do want to put a word of caution about 80's nostalgia, I think its always good to keep in mind that decade had its share of problems too.  For every Duran Duran there was a Milli Vanilli.  Sure Miami Vice was cool but Small Wonder was a sack of poop.  And for some reason I never saw Manimal but that seems like something I would have liked.

It would seem natural to enjoy this with a drink popular in the 80's.  Why, oh why, were they so sweet?  Did Sex on the Beach go well with cocaine?  I drank wine coolers which were not any better.  Yep, totally underage.  I think all the boys wanted to know which would win, my Catholic school knowledge of St. Francis or Saints Bartles & James.  Both involved genuflecting a lot.  I just worshiped B&J when tying to step off curbs for some reason.

If you want to op out of the B-52's and the Mudslides, keep in mind that this book is set in the future.  So you could make a futuristic cocktail of your own creation.  I think it should be a natural extension of current drink trends.  Maybe bacon-infused spirits from rye mash served in a slightly charred corn cob.

Ragtime

Remember when Teddy Roosevelt was President? What about that "fatty" William Howard Taft?  Of course, he was from Cincinnati.  One man in a long line of distinguished fat Cincinnatians.  Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow set in 1906, seamlessly blends fictional characters and historical figures.  Houdini, J.P.Morgan and Evelyn Nesbit are real people and apparently also bat-shit crazy.  I only looked up Evelyn Nesbit's story because it is a significant plot point.  Her real story is even crazier, yes, he toned it down for the book.  Anyway, if you like your historical fiction a little lascivious, slightly violent, with a smattering of revolutionary politics, you'll enjoy this.

They made a Ragtime movie which was on HBO when I was a kid.  I think it was inappropriate for children because I remember full frontal nudity. I haven't seen it lately but that seems like something you would remember, especially when you have older brothers.  Guess who showed her "business?" Why, it was a young Elizabeth McGovern.  Yes, the Countess of Grantham.  I would love to incorporate Maggie Smith and Downton Abbey into that scene. Maggie would say dryly, "A bit early to bring out the crumpets for tea, isn't it?" (raised eyebrow)  Or, "Its nice to see that the estate has taken the effort to match the carpet with the drapes, its so rare to find that these days."

There is a reason this is a "classic." You should be warned that everyone acknowledges that the ending is kind of crappy compared to the first three quarters of the book, which are pretty awesome.

I asked an expert on what would be a popular drink during this time period and he said the Bronx Cocktail. Take 1/3 Plymouth Gin, 1/3 French Vermouth, 1/3 Italian Vermouth, flavored with two dashes of orange bitters, a barspoon full of orange juice and a squeeze of orange peel.  Shake well with cracked ice, strain and serve.

Oh, and guess where E.L. Doctorow is from.  The Bronx.  Mind. Blown.

The Count of Monte Cristo

At the end of 1,200 pages Alexander Dumas manages to tie up every loose end in this complicated revenge story.  Are you paying attention George R. R. Martin?  Yeah, and he wrote it in 1844.  ALL THE LOOSE ENDS.  Here is the plot in one sentence: Edmond, a sailor, gets wrongfully imprisoned, escapes, becomes filthy rich and enacts revenge on all those who put him in prison. Stick that in your SparkNotes.

After his daring prison escape, Edmond learns about 20 languages and somehow acquires every fact in the world except how to get a decent tan.  When you read the book it appears that his ten years after the escape are all done in furtherance of his revenge plot.  But when you think of it, he would have bought secret lady-slaves, hire a giant mute servant who had his tongue cut out, become a master of disguise and learn to be an expert fencer and marksman anyway.  We all would.  He is filthy rich, doesn't sleep much, is always busy, knows everything and was in prison.  In other words, the Martha Stewart of 19th century Europe.  

The book is old and still awesome.  I think writers have been inadvertently and purposefully ripping off the characters and themes of this book for 150 years.  For example, the grandfather Nortier cannot move or communicate except by a series of blinks.  If that is not Breaking Bad's Hector "Tio" Salmanaca and his damn bell I'll eat my hat.

Drink with Henry IV Cognac.  It costs $2,000,000 a bottle.  The Count would drink nothing less.      

Zombie Spaceship Wasteland

Oh Patton Oswalt, why did this have to happen.  I am going to blame your publisher.  But you need to take some responsibility for your name being sullied. Why did you not insist on someone editing your notebooks? You clearly had at least three slim notebooks, one memoir, one of comedic bits and one stream of consciousness.  A publisher approached you and said, "Hey you're so hot (culturally) right now why don't we publish a book?" Sure, you said, "I already have some material I've been collecting for the last 15 years." "Great! Here's your check."  The end.

I still love Patton Oswalt, I love his stand-up work and I'll always love that he made a wonderfully obscure Werner Herzog reference on NPR.  I even think he's a decent actor.  This...was not so hot.  It lacked execution.  It is the literary equivalent of that Nordic Track that you dry your track jackets on in the basement.  The memoir part is about growing up geeky outside D.C. The main take-away is that he missed all these great Black Flag shows because he grew up in the burgs and watched Star Wars.  The Star Wars-burgs bits are your entire career!  We can't relate to the Black Flag kids, they made fun of us remember?  With no transition, this book also consists of odd comedic bits.  Please refer to John Hodgman if you ever think about doing that crap again.  1000 hobo names takes a lot of work.  That's why its so funny.  I am positive you work much harder on your stand-up.  Go back to kissing Cherlize Theron in movies.

While I don't recommend this book, for drinks, pick something equally lame and without substance like a Zima.

Watership Down

"I'm pretty sure all the bunnies die." This is what my husband said to me when he saw me reading this book. But I knew he never read this book and he was guessing.  I must admit thinking that you are going into a Lars Von Trier dismal abyss will make this book much more exciting to read.  And yes, some bunnies die, but not all of them.

Watership Down is an anthropomorphized adventure story about a small group of rabbits looking for a new warren.  They are not completely humanoid because they do not wear top hats.  For some reason, top hats are my benchmark for a sophisticated animal.  Even top hat-less the rabbits' conversations are awfully sophisticated.  I'm pretty sure if you could understand what rabbits talked about, it would be: "Now, is that poop or food?" Or, "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT NOISE?" (*Stands perfectly still for 90 minutes*)

This was the first selection of my very tiny book club and my friend brought over chocolate covered peanuts.  She said, "This is hraka." That it lapine language for poop.  A fun game is to tell everyone what rabbit you are most like.  Then they tell you what rabbit they think you are are.  Trust me, you will pick the smarter more clever version of yourself and your friends will pick the less flattering kind-of-jerk bunny.  We all have to eat hraka sometime.

This book is very British and evokes the first signs of spring.  I recommend a Pimm's Cup. The bunny in you will enjoy the slice of cucumber.  The alcoholic in you will enjoy the gin.  

The Rook

People foolishly ask, what can you do with a Master's Degree in Medieval History from The Ohio State University?  You write a kick-ass debut fantasy book, that's what. Take one part Memento, one part X-Men and add lots of Britishness for good measure.  The main character, Myfawny, which must be a Welsh name, because that's just nuts, either has amnesia or has recently replaced her entire body.  In this book, either of those two things could happen.  She works as a "rook" for "her majesty's supernatural secret service." Rook refers to her rank, think chess pieces, not giant bird.  In this book, turning into a giant bird would be relatively normal. 

Myfawny's special powers have to do with her ability to mess people up when she touches them.  But her real power comes from her ability to do paperwork and statistics efficiently.  Seriously, this is her special power.  O'Malley probably thinks this is magic because all of us involved in the humanties suck at math and if you are good at it, well clearly that's because of magic.

Daniel O'Malley's day job is writing press releases regarding plane crash investigations for the Australian government.  After reading this book, I am thinking those must be fun to read.  It says here the plane went down because a self-aware blob caused it to crash.  Then his boss shakes his fist and says "O'Malley you've done it again!" (He smirks....then freeze frame). 

Drinks: Because this book involves possible memory loss, I highly recommend an Absinthe cocktail.  One of my favorites is a Sazerac. At least I think I remember liking it... Here's a recipe:  http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/ABSINTHE-SAZERAC-350802