Category: Beer Books

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A Book & A Beer – Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

I am not a big memoir reader (except for this year it seems) but as the author of Hillbilly Elegy states at the beginning of his book, this isn’t really a memoir.

It is a hybrid memoir with scattered bits of social policy thrown in. To me, the history of the J.D. Vance’s growing up is fascinating with one of the key take-aways being that the skills that he needed to survive childhood are not the same ones that he needed as an adult. I found the political and how to help the poor (aka hillbillies) to be a bit simplistic at times though Vance does go out of his way to say that the problem doesn’t have a one size fits all solution. Those thinking that he is some staunch Republican would find little in common with the current powermongers in DC or with most Republicans. He is basically right-center on the spectrum.

I will be highlighting breweries in Ohio and Kentucky where the book was primarily set this month, so for my recommendation, I would suggest (if still made) have a beer that was around when you were growing up. For me, I would find some Widmer or McMenamin’s to take me back to my past and the places that made me who I am.

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Like A Geek

Jeff Cioletti tries to pair up the geek subculture withe the alcohol industry in his latest book, Drink Like a Geek. This is his 5th book about adult beverages and one that may be the hardest to pull off. Especially if he leads with the fact that he “directed two documentaries about Star Wars Episode I” The book contains cocktail recipes but promises to add more than just being a genre recipe book. I will add it to my library list to preview.

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A Book & A Beer – The Nickel Boys

Colson Whitehead seems to be able to move from genre to genre seamlessly so I felt in good hands when it came to his latest, The Nickel Boys.

It is a slim book but it does pack a punch in telling the stories of Elwood and his fellow Nickel inmate Turner. Whitehead could have gone overboard with the violence but he has modulated it so that it stays horrifying instead of numbing the reader. The fact that a place like this existed creates enough sadness on its own as well. The two main characters come through vividly and the twist at the end leaves a pit in the stomach. There is no universe or karma coming to punish the violent men in this book while the scars show both physically and emotionally on the boys and men from Nickel.

There is no cool or fun beer link for a book like this but since it does leave a bad taste in the mouth, I would suggest finding a beer brewed for charity and putting some good into the world to offset the crap the kids in the book had to put up with. Or, even better, instead of buying an overpriced 4-pack, donate that money to a charity to help the Bahamas recover from Hurricane Dorian like the World Central Kitchen.

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If This Was Real…

…it just might be my next A Book & A Beer post for September…

…but alas it is not and it is a Racoon instead of my preferred woodland creature, the mighty badger. But maybe even in just image form, it could be a series of book covers.

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Book Review -The Lager Queen of Minnesota

The Lager Queen of Minnesota is has shout-outs to several SoCal beer people in the acknowledgment section in the back  and it is clear from this book by J. Ryan Stradal that he listened and took notes.  There are so many books out there where the minutia of other workplaces have been discussed from detectives to doctors and back again.  But this is the first book that talks about hops and malts and cleaning and beer culture inside the novel form.

The book takes three strands of women sisters Helen and Edith and Edith’s granddaughter Diana and covers their journeys to the present in a brewhouse through the lens of ambition, pie and the upper MidWest.  It is cool to see that all three characters are driven in different ways and strong in different ways and human in different ways and that men are mere side players in this interwoven story.

The tone is refreshingly nice and honest at the same time and doesn’t hammer points across but instead just glides from focusing on Helen to Edith and to Diana.  Each chapter name is a dollar amount that plays a part in that chapter and it is money that is a central focus of this book as much as the beer. 

The beer and brewing portions might seem a bit caricature but when you think about, beer people do resemble the people in this book and I loved the beer recipes that the Grandma’s make toward the latter stages.  It was clear that the author was having fun with it.

The Lager Queen might be too Midwest nice for some people but this book earns and sticks its landing at the end.  You will want to have a cold Blotz light when you finish.

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Pocket Guide

Beer books have to have something that they cannot get from a quick Google search, and the The Guide to Craft Beer from the Brewers Association looks to do that by adding a tasting log and including a food and beer section as well as helping “readers explore style preferences, traditional and modern brewing ingredients” as well. What I think separates this from a reference book fate is the pocket size and the focus on community. I will check it out and report back.

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A Book & A Beer – The Porpoise by Mark Haddon

Not too many books with Pericles, Prince of Tyre as a character nowadays but Mark Haddon reaches back to Shakespeare for the weird, The Porpoise. Now, I usually like interwoven stories, stories that span time frames, multi-character arcs and the like. But this story veers away from the opening line and slowly becomes a re-telling of Pericles but with a few names changed (for whatever reason Thasia is now Chloe) and some of the action re-imagined. As if a Hollywood screenwriter had adapted the play but didn’t want to 100% mimic it.

There is also a very weird Dead Shakespeare interlude with another writer of the time that comments on Pericles but says nothing really about the story that we started with. And then the book just ends. SPOILER ALERT – Haddon sets fire to a house and just kills off the main characters that were abandoned a 1/3 of the way into the book. I could totally see a modern take on Pericles but this is not it. Most of the time it just meanders like a boat lost at sea.

Now, I could be extra glib and say for a beer that you should find the worst one in your ‘fridge and leave it at that but I think it better to pick up something aquatic related. So something from Pelican Brewing in Pacific City, Oregon might work. Like their Doryman’s Dark Ale for the twisted turns in this book or you could go sour for the taste in your mouth reading this with SeaQuench from Dogfish Head.

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Beer Book – The Lager Queen of Minnesota

Most, if not all books about beer, are non-fiction. You are not going to find brewers as the focus of fictional lives. The tilt is towards the dangerous and event filled occupations like firefighters or spies. But along comes….

What’s great about the Lager Queen of Minnesota (which is now on my reading list) is that it is not only about beer but about woman and beer. The author, ” Stradal says he visited more than three dozen breweries in his research for the book. “The women I met working at these breweries were really inspiring,” he says.”

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Serious

If this book was just about pizza, I would still be interested but this book is more than that. After listening to the author, Ed Levine talk about his life on the Good Food podcast, I knew that I would be adding this to my reading list because it details how a food website came to be in an era when anything blog related seemed limitless. A full review of Serious Eater will happen later this year.

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A Book & A Beer – This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else

It is strange to go back in time and behind the scenes of the musicians that created part of the soundtrack of your teenage years. You sometimes lose the luster of the music to details of private lives. I was a big New Order fan, still am of a range of their music but I did not know how they came to be, their origin story as it were. I got into a slice of Joy Division music and now after the movie Control and the book above, I know more about the people who created the music.

This is not a regular historical account of the Ian Curtis years. It is an oral history arranged in chronological order. All the people involved in the story have their say and you bounce from Bernard (Barney), Peter (Hooky) and Stephen (just Stephen) as the main protagonists as well as the roadies, the manager, the wives and girlfriends and music reviews.

This oral history style is popular on websites talking about films and TV and works to an extent here but I do wish there was more historical data in-between to add some context to the matter. But as a piece of the record (pun intended), it does add to the knowledge base of the band.

I have three ideas as to what to drink with this book. First, find some British cask ale and immerse yourself in Manchester of the late 1970’s. Yorkshire Square and MacLeod’s would be the L.A. options.

Second there is an anecdote in the book about drinking Duvel so that would work and probably get you in the mindset of the devil. And lastly, the new Leaves of Grass series from Bell’s would provide the needed poetry that great music has when it is really working.