Monday, November 8, 2010

NovBeerOk? (NUohvBEERawk?)

So we missed the chance for celebrating the deliciousness that is beer in October, but don't wet your leiderhosen just yet. Here's a little of taste of winter, with New Books AND New Beers

First up: Sierra Nevada's Celebration Seasonal Ale (Chico, CA) and Compass Rose by John Casey (Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95, 368 pgs) -- Since forever, solitude in nature has been as integral a part of the American experience as fish and chips has been to the British one. And though it's obvious that both are worthy of the highest rumination, only one truly comes to the fore in Casey's latest.

20 years in the making, Compass Rose is his accomplished object. Big and wandering, it's as good a novel as Spartina, and as finely attuned to the rhythms of the waters, the leaves, and the people who drift in their midst. Here's my synopsis: Rurul Rhode Island Epic Fishing?. Drink the tasty Celebration with it to celebrate the details gotten right.

Room by Emma Donahue (Little, Brown, and Co., $19.99, 336 pgs) and Stone Brewing Co.'s Double Bastard (Escondido, CA) -- Already a darling of so many of those intimidating Books-of-The-Year lists, Room is the book you're either talking about or will shortly be talking about. Told from the perspective of a 5 year old boy imprisoned in 'Room' where he sleeps in 'Wardrobe' and is attended to by his mother, it's a novel that evokes a shocking mix of horror and pathos and tenderness mingled with dread. Slurp down a couple glasses of Double Bastard while you get cozy in 'Room' because it too, confuses its belligerent hoppy bitterness with a malty smoothness more germane to a conversation 007 had at the Ritz. Grog.

As usual, drop us line about your beeroks!

xoxo