Five top books about cocktails

One title on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on cocktails:

Imbibe!
by David Wondrich

Jerry Thomas was a nineteenth-century pioneer of the American bar, creating cocktails, punches, sours, and toddies that lived long after the publication of his 1862 Bartender's Guide. In this James Beard Award-winning book, the foremost historian of the American cocktail pours out Thomas's story in a lively style ballasted by deep research -- and topped off with a sparkling selection of recipes old and new. (To follow Wondrich on his further excursions into the deep past of convivial drinking, you'll want to read his equally intoxicating Punch.)

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six unlikely beach reads

Beach reads don't have to be guilty pleasures, argues Ryan Britt at The Barnes & Noble Book Blog. They can be welcoming, relatable, and fun. One recent title that fits the bill:

Mastermind, by Maria Konnikova

In this nonfiction, Gladwellian approach to Sherlock Holmes, smarty-pants Konnikova owns the conversation on how the most famous fictional detective of all time is so psychologically important. Part literary exploration, part how-to manual, this is one you’ll fly through even if you have just a passing interest in Sherlock, Elementary, or the Robert Downey, Jr., incarnations of Holmes. What Douglas Coupland did for Marshall McLuhan with You Know Nothing of My Work!, Konnikova has done for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (And though this book came out new in paperback at the end of 2013, it’s still recent enough to warrant a look!)

Read about the other books on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Mastermind.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best literary gardens

The Guardian's John Dugdale named ten of the best literary gardens, including:

Philippa Gregory, Earthly Joys (1998)

Centring on the great early 17th-century gardener John Tradescant, who had access to court via his patrons Cecil and Buckingham; in Gregory's sequel, Virgin Earth, his son becomes gardener to Charles I and emigrates to Virginia during the civil wars.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five incredible tales of Paris’s past and present

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Katherine Monasterio recommended five incredible tales of Paris’s past and present, including:

A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

There’s a reason Shakespeare & Company keeps this book stocked. Hemingway’s experience in Paris perfectly captures that certain sense of longing that visitors feel toward the City of Light. His distinct, blunt style reads like you’re sitting with him at a brasserie, sipping a bière and sharing gossip. His complicated relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald, the wry advice from Gertrude Stein, the patient friendship of Sylvia Beach—it’s absolutely delightful to read, a piece of Paris you can take with you anywhere.

Read about the other entries on the list.

A Moveable Feast made the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on Americans in Paris, Neil Pearson's six best books list, Diana Souhami's top ten list of "books about Paris and London lesbians in the early 20th century", Laura Landro's five best list of books about travel; it is a book to which Russell Banks always returns.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten hospital novels

Sarah Moss' new novel is Bodies of Light.

One of the author's top ten hospital novels, as shared at the Guardian:

Regeneration by Pat Barker

Set in Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh during the first world war, Pat Barker's Booker prize winner focuses on the work of Dr William Rivers with victims of shell-shock and trauma. The hospital is a place of healing, where there is some space for attempts to redress the damage of war, but it is in the end a military institution that exacts the final loyalty of its most ambitious employees. In a novel with few female characters, the exploration of different kinds of masculinity in a time of war is deeply engaging.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Regeneration is one of Hermione Norris's six best books. The Regeneration Trilogy is on William Skidelsky's list of the 10 best historical novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight of the best women in military science fiction

At Kirkus Reviews, Thea James tagged eight of the best women in military science fiction, including:

Meet Devi Morris, protagonist of the Paradox trilogy [by Rachel Bach], and one of the most ambitious and stubborn heroines we Book Smugglers have had the pleasure of reading in a while. While Devi is a phenomenal lead, she isn’t the first female character to star in a military science-fiction series—in fact, she has plenty of good company. One of our favorite subgenres of science fiction is military SF, as often in these novels female characters (like Devi) are accepted as equals in combat, science and command scenarios.

Read about the other entries on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Fortune's Pawn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten music books

Jarvis Cocker is a musician, singer-songwriter, radio presenter and editor. He may be best known as frontman for the band Pulp.

One of Cocker's top ten music books, as shared at the Guardian:

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
by Carson McCullers

I ripped this off royally for the song "Big Julie" from my first solo album. The description of Mick Kelly hearing Beethoven's Third symphony for the first time, while hiding beneath a neighbour's window and eavesdropping on their radio, is still the only piece of writing I've found that comes close to describing the effect that a great piece of music has on the human organism. The rest of the book isn't bad either…

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see: Greil Marcus's five top books on rock music, Nile Rodgers's top ten music books, Samuel Muston's ten best music memoirs, and Kitty Empire's ten best rock autobiographies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books that walk the line between YA and adult

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Melissa Albert tagged five books that walk the line between YA and adult, including:

The Death of Bees, by Lisa O’Donnell

On a frigid morning in a Glasgow housing project, two girls bury their parents in the backyard. We don’t know how they died, but we do know the world is better off without them. The story is told in alternating chapters by the two sisters—bright, foulmouthed Marnie, and eccentric Nelly, who speaks like a child’s idea of an Evelyn Waugh character—and their lonely next-door neighbor, known as the neighborhood perv since he tried to solicit a young prostitute in a moment of weakness. As winter turns to spring, the girls’ secret is threatened by an angry drug dealer, the reappearance of their wayward grandfather, and a dog who just won’t stop digging.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Death of Bees.

My Book, The Movie: The Death of Bees.

Writers Read: Lisa O'Donnell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best spy novels

Alan Judd is a novelist and biographer who has previously served in the British army and the Foreign Office. Chosen as one of the original twenty Best Young British Novelists, he subsequently won the Royal Society of Literature's Winifred Holtby Award, the Heinemann Award and the Guardian Fiction Award; he was also shortlisted for the Westminster Prize. His latest novel is Inside Enemy.

Two of Judd's five favorite spy novels, as shared at the Telegraph:

It was le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) ... that became the quintessential Cold War spy novel, arguably his most important if not quite his best. That honour, for me, goes to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), with its echoes of Philby and the Cambridge spies.

Read about the other novels on Judd's list.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is among Rory MacLean's top ten Berliners in literature, Louise Doughty's ten best courtroom dramas, Jon Stock's top ten John le Carré novels, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on The Cold War, Charles Cumming's best books, and Keith Jeffery's five best books about Britain's Secret Service.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is on John Mullan's list of ten of the best pairs of glasses in literature and among Jon Stock's top ten John le Carré novels, Jeffrey Archer's top ten romans-fleuves, Robert Baer's five best books on being a spy and Stella Rimington's six favorite secret agent novels; Peter Millar includes it among John le Carré's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 23 greatest thrillers ever written

The Telegraph presented the twenty-three greatest thrillers ever written, including:

Killing Floor
Lee Child (1997)

When ex-army loner Jack Reacher gets off a bus in a one-horse town in the American South he is instantly arrested and charged with murdering his own brother. But boy have they picked the wrong man to pick on…

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten stinky characters in children's fiction

Pamela Butchart is the author of Yikes, Stinkysaurus, illustrated by Sam Lloyd.

At the Guardian she tagged ten top stinky characters in children's fiction, including:

Dr Proctor's Fart Powder by Jo Nesbø

"Oh, no," Lisa said, dismayed. "Not the fartonaut powder…"

Dr Proctor makes a super-strength fart powder that is so powerful it can propel people into outer space. Even though Dr Proctor's plan is to make an odourless fart powder, he's still a stinky character in my opinion (he MUST be, he's obsessed with parping!) A fun, fart-filled adventure!

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top fathers and father figures in YA literature

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Dahlia Adler tagged five top fathers and father figures in Young Adult literature, including:

Sam (Then You Were Gone, by Lauren Strasnick)

Strictly speaking, Sam isn’t anyone’s dad, he’s the live-in boyfriend of main character Adrienne’s mother. That said, as a father figure, he’s one of the most present and caring I’ve seen in YA—a standout feature in its own right that’s magnified times infinity when you take into account how rarely nontraditional family structures receive a positive portrayal.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue