What I'm Reading

...And Drinking

Image: https://www.diffordsguide.com/cocktails/recipe/954/hemingway-special-daiquiri-papa-doble

I like to read seasonally. Save the 1,000 page biographies for the depths of Winter, and keep things light, or at least different when the days are long. I drink the same way.

Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway

This is the Hemingway I’ll come back to this summer, not The Old Man and the Sea, which can feels like too much suffering. Islands in the Stream gives you summer in full bloom, with rum-soaked Caribbean days, salt air, fatherhood, art, grief, and war. It was published in 1970, nine years after his death from compiled manuscripts written in the 40s and 50s. It's not Hemingway's best writing, but it's both lush and melancholy, and goes good with sun and rum.

The Papa Doble

Hemingway’s personal take on the Cuban daiquiri, was born at El Floridita bar in Havana, where he reportedly downed a dozen in one sitting. He asked the bartender to skip the sugar and double the rum. Tart, and face-puckering, like a grapefruit-laced summer storm.

Papa Doble (Hemingway Daiquiri) Recipe

2 oz white rum

¾ oz fresh lime juice

½ oz fresh grapefruit juice

¼ oz maraschino liqueur

Shake with ice, strain into a coupe glass. No garnish, no sugar, no apologies.

Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald

I've never read Zelda’s only novel, which is often dismissed as the erratic scrawl of a woman gone mad, or at least driven mad by a drunk husband. But the wife of one of our most famous writers should get her due.

Save Me the Waltz is said to be “uneven, electric, original, and filled with longing.” Fits the summer bill for me. She wrote it in a fever, pulling from her own life.

The French 75

This drink dates back to World War I-era Paris, named after the 75mm field gun used by the French army, because it supposedly hits with the same impact.

It first appeared at Harry’s New York Bar, a favorite haunt of expat writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Pound. Gin, lemon juice, sugar, Champagne.

French 75 Recipe

1 oz gin

½ oz fresh lemon juice

½ oz simple syrup

Top with chilled Champagne

Shake gin, lemon, and syrup with ice. Strain into a flute or coupe. Top with Champagne. Garnish with a lemon twist theatrically.

Eve’s Hollywood by Eve Babitz

If Zelda embodied the Jazz Age, Eve Babitz did the same for 1970s Los Angeles, with more sex, more sun, and eyeliner. Eve is often framed as the party girl counterpart to the literary Joan Didion, so I'm going to find out. Eve’s Hollywood is said to be “part memoir, part love letter, part hangover.” Solid desert pool read.

The Tequila Sunrise

California kitsch at its best. Bright and sweet without trying too hard. It was invented (or popularized) in the early ’70s at the Trident in Sausalito, then swept into pop culture by the Stones and the Eagles.

Tequila Sunrise Recipe

2 oz tequila

4 oz orange juice

½ oz grenadine

Pour tequila and OJ over ice in a tall glass. Slowly add grenadine so it sinks to the bottom. Don’t stir. Garnish with an orange slice or cherry if you’re feeling glamorous.

Cheers!

xAP