Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell

How can you make a novel about a magical world tedious?  Well, make it 1000+ pages, check.  Footnotes, that add nothing, check. I resisted this book for years.  Originally published in 2004, at that time I was working at a bookstore and the hype surrounding this first time novel was ape-shit.  That is not always a good thing.  Also, it had a ringing endorsement from a fellow bookseller that has questionable taste. Very questionable taste.  My instincts were right.  It was over-publicized and the taste is still very questionable.

Set in early 1800's England, magic is not a fictional construct but a part of the history of Great Britain.  A gentleman could "study" magic, but no gentlemen "practised" magic anymore.  That is until one rich jackass does, then another rich jackass does.  At first they get along, then they don't.  Also, fairies are the ultimate jackasses, but you knew that already. I know what you are thinking, fairies...then there will be sexy vampires.  No, in this book the closest you get to a vampire is an alcoholic bum that lives under a bush. 

It took Susanna Clarke ten years to write this book.  She wrote it in her spare time. You would think it would have more passion after editing cookbooks all day. It feels more like trying to make a sourdough starter using wild yeast. Yeah, lets let it sit out for a month and hope random floating crap in the air will make it interesting. Also, it has some of the WORST illustrations I have ever seen. Keep in mind, I went to a state university art school. I saw hungover Goth kids draw something 15 minutes before the critique that looked better than these. 

Illustrations aside, this is not a terrible fantasy book, but not worth the hype.  Apparently it is currently in production for a seven episode series on BBC and it could be kick-ass so I'm keeping an open mind. 

As for a drink pairing, this book, if nothing, is a glimpse into the class hierarchies in England in the early 1800's.  So your choice of drink while reading this might say something about your social strata. 

In this time period, high class ladies and gentlemen might drink Claret, which is the British word for a Bordeaux.  If you are lower class, you drink gin.  This is particularly true if you have no major issues about living under the local shrubbery.  I like both.  Screw the hierarchies.

Clockwork Orange

Alright I cheated. This is not the cover of the version I read.  This is the German translation, but c'mon, this cover is awesome.

I'm sure you are aware of this dystopian, satirical, thought-provoking novel. Set in the future, under a kind quasi-Stalinistic England, roving gangs of ruffians inflict violence narrating in their own odd slang.

I also think you already know what happens to our sociopathic narrator as the book and movie infiltrated popular culture completely.  Yes, Alex's prison number is quietly referenced in Ready Player One.  Inside nerd joke. That is not a joke about the inside of a nerd, but that sounds like a good start to a joke if you ask me. The punchline involves half-digested Magic the Gathering game cards.

This book is the literary equivalent of a supersaturated solution full of provocative "big questions."  Normally that would tick me off, as I despise any story with ham-fisted manipulation (which sounds delicious).  For example, I despised that movie Crash.  I hated the Kite Runner.  Clockwork Orange is much more subtle, and raises more questions than answers.  I does lose minor points for difficult-to-read heavy dialect.  You may want a decoder.  Apparently many are available on the interwebs. 

According to said interwebs, the dialect is loosely based on Russian.  An appropriate drink would be a White Russian.  It is also appropriate because the characters drink a lot of "spiked milk."

White Russians are easy to make and even easier to drink.  There are variations, but the ratio is roughly 2 parts vodka, 1 part Kahlua and one part light cream or half and half. Serve over ice.  I highly recommend drinking it in a small glass.  It does not taste like a full-blown cocktail.  IT IS.  Do not under any circumstances drink it out of a full sized tumbler or full mason jar.  Together, we'll promise not to do this (in the future) and we'll call it the Warsaw Pact.

The Night Circus

I could recommend this book to you and you may still hate it.  It may shake your faith in my reasoning, discerning taste and my book knowledge. You should know that I read this book at a time in my life when I needed to go to a magic circus world for a little bit.  You may not need to go to magic circus, you may be well adjusted and want some Jonathan Franzen in your life. This is not Franzen, Pynchon or even Chabon.  This is Harry Potter for adults.  Are you ok with that? 

Erin Morgenstern is a visual artist and a young Smith College graduate.  She wanted to write a best selling novel? Why the hell not. YOU CAN DO ANYTHING!!!  She admits her first submitted manuscript was a hot mess and they made her rewrite the whole thing.  I still suspect even with the rewrite her editor felt like he or she was bench pressing free-weights on Jupiter. Some think it needed another rewrite. It was obvious the publisher saw the raw material for what it was (Harry Potter for adults--YE$!) 

This is the story of dueling magicians. There is no way to avoid comparisons to The Prestige written by Christopher Priest and made into a movie starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale.  A fun game to play is to ask people who is hotter, Jackman or Bale. I was at a table with about six straight guys and the overwhelming answer was Christian Bale.  They were vehement about it.  The answer was definitive and swift.  It was clear they had really thought about it and more than once.  But I digress, this book features a man and a woman who must duel....to the death. The magicians are trained by two sick bastards as a long standing bet.  Those bastards remind me of the Dukes in Trading Places.

Do you remember my snacking theory from my review of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter? This book has the most amazing snacks featuring: hot chocolate, warm cider, cinnamon pastries, drizzled popcorn and ten course dinners.  Clearly this was written by someone amidst the throes of PMS. I was ok with it...very ok. 

Morgenstern creates a beautiful setting with her background as an visual artist.  Despite its flaws I liked it.  One trusted friend thought she couldn't quite pull it together. I, however, needed a delicious, beautiful world to live in for 387 pages so I enjoyed it.

If you read this in the fall I would drink some mulled cider.  Any other time, drink with any Bells beer because they are consistently good and no one can argue their talent and craft. Drink a Bells with Christian Bale. Apparently everyone can get on board with that....and I mean everyone.     

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

I had a minor existential crisis after reading this book.  Of course, I have at least one existential crisis every week.  How can I not like a book with rave reviews?  Well, its because this book is just not right for me.  I should have known reading the book's description.  An atmospheric drama set in rural Mississippi....(oh no.) Two men who once called each other friends must confront the past they have buried for decades. (ugh.)  Now, I would have been on board with a book description like this:  Two men who once called each other friends must confront the past hidden dragon eggs they have buried for decades.

The existential crisis involved asking myself, "Am I a snob?" The answer is probably.  However, I will submit to you, gentle reader, that I loved that movie Winter's Bone. Those people were very poor, very rednecky and had enough Appalachian drama for three movies.  I think the difference was the protagonist was feisty and tough (and she looked super hot in an Oscar dress.)   

The characters in Crooked Letter are not as poor as in those in Winter's Bone, but they are kind of pathetic.  Everything is kind of sad.  The situations are sad, the people are sad and most importantly the food is sad.  Almost all works of fiction include some meals and/or snacking. It really sets a mood.  Here, Silas, the town cop, eats two greasy hot dogs he got from the diner which he carried around in a paper sack.  How is this even possible?  I did not think hot dogs were even portable!  How would the bag not be destroyed by the grease?  I do not know--but I refuse to google "two hot dogs in a sack"  because I'm very afraid of the results. 

Tom Franklin is a fine writer and I really wish him continued success.  I read this book because I wanted to participate in an online book club and this was their pick.  I should have remembered that I am insanely picky and weird.  I have never been what someone call "normal." I still submit that I am not a snob.  But "the lady doth protest too much methinks." Wait, that's fancy Shakespeare talk. I am getting too big for my britches. 

Drinks: Someone recently gave me a whole bottle of Jack Daniels and I didn't know what to do with it.  I asked my local expert and he recommended an Old Fashioned.
Here we go:  Dissolve a lump of sugar with a little water in a whiskey glass and add two dashes of Angostura bitters.  Then add a small piece of ice, a piece of lemon peel and one jigger of whiskey.  Mix with a bar spoon.  It was pretty good.  I can't help wondering, maybe fancier whiskey? Dammit! I am a snob. 

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.