I’m a long-time fan of Abe’s Books. Their emails and posts are imaginative, clever, and—for book loves—totally engaging. (Abe’s also has a great inventory of very special first editions and such.)
Here’s an example of how they promote books by way of a theme:
Books are remembered for their characters, plots, language, humor, and heartbreak. They’re not typically remembered for their cocktails, and yet many of literature’s most famous stories are so full of booze their pages practically reek of it. In fact, alcohol plays a role in many important literary scenes, from the moment Ebenezer Scrooge endeavors to assist Bob Cratchit’s struggling family in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, to the sweltering hot afternoon at the Plaza Hotel in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
While we y not recall that it’s a bowl of smoking bishop Scrooge offers Cratchit, or that Daisy insists Tom and Gatsby cool down with a mint julep, there are some cocktails a reader cannot forget, like James Bond’s iconic martini, or the moloko plus in A Clockwork Orange. From the iconic to the hardly-noticed, we’ve compiled a list of literary cocktails fit for a bibliophile.
You can read Abe’s entire post here. And, you can learn how to make a real gimlet, my goto theatre intermission drink, by way of The Long Good-Bye.
We sat in a corner of the bar at Victor’s and drank gimlets. “They don’t know how to make them here,” he said. “What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else.
Happy Holidays from BrockelPress. Cheers!