Lit & Liquor

This week, Lit & Liquor made the decision to dive back into a self-published anthology, though if your hopes are getting up, we'll crush them now and say that unfortunately, there is no pirate/Irish/Scottish accent blend in this episode. We hope you'll forgive us for this oversight.Instead, we chose an anthology with an interesting concept: the theme was dystopian, but every single story had to end with the same phrase: "From now on, I'll save myself." Thus the name, "From Now On--a Last Words Anthology".In an apparent attempt to bring about our own end of days, we each decided to bring a shot to the table for the book. We had a Lemon Drop shot, an M&M shot, and a Loopy shot, which uses Rum Chata and Loopy Vodka, which is Fruit Loop flavored for any uncultured sober kids out there. Since Ashley and Sam couldn't find any Loopy Vodka, they took an uncharted adventure into the world of infusing vodka...with Fruit Loops. Listen to see our experiment ended up!

We've allowed ourselves to be vulnerable this week, guys. Our geekiness, while never hidden away completely on this show, came out to play in full force with this long awaited (by us, anyway) anime episode. It was Kassandra's first time dipping a toe into these beautiful animated waters, but trust you us--she's since dove straight into the deep end with nary a breath of air.First up is "Ouran High School Host Club," paired with a popular TikTok fad of five minutes ago, Whipped Coffee, ours being spiked, of course. Needing a little testosterone after all those rose animations, we follow with popular "One Punch Man," and what could be better paired with this than a Rum Punch Man cocktail?

Pitting romance novels against each other just didn't prove to be enough of a battle for our bloodthirsty selves, so we came up with a different mix to throw into the ring: father versus son in the combination of Stephen King and his son, Joe King or as the literary world knows him, Joe Hill. You may remember him from an earlier episode as the author of a horror anthology, "21st Century Ghosts", which had mixed reviews from the group.This week, we decided to take each of their first full-length novels and see how they compared. For the "King of Horror" that ended up being "Carrie", so naturally we had to settle down with our blood orange cocktail, "The Favorite," and watch the movie as well. Joe Hill's first novel went by the name "Heart Shaped Box", and in what was deemed to be a purposeful break from his father's favorite book setting of Maine, our characters traveled up and down and around and across the South of the good old USA, blood and destruction following. Therefore, our Southern Spiked Peach Iced Tea helped to wash away the gore just a little bit. Listen on to find out who our favorite was!

You hear that noise? Quiet, quiet... ah, yes, that one. The sound of a Viking warlord soundly spanking his captive. Not your cup of tea? Well, ours neither but you can look forward to such things in this weeks romance novel face off episode! Last rounds winner, the samurai, is represented by "Firefly: Warrior Woman of the Samurai". While they again didn't show too strongly in the ring, at least our Lychee Sour cocktail brought its best self.In the other corner, switch in hand and ready to strike, is "Conquered by the Viking" by Ashe Barker. What other choice for a drink pairing was there than mead? We explored a Honey Wine and a flavored Passionfruit Mead to soften blows of all types from this book.

There's nothing we like better than real history packaged as fiction with a little--or a lot--of dramatic flair. There's nothing we mutually dislike more than Nazis, and our books this week delivered some of both. Ashley has a personal connection with our first book, "Citizen 865" by Debbie Cenzipek, which is a completely factual exploration into the famed Nazi hunters within the US government. Though a completely sobering tale, our Häagen Dazs Spirits Ice Cream kept our spirits up through this discussion (pun intended). Adding a little more amusement but no less horror to the discussion was "The Boys From Brazil" by Ira Levin, a story that uses real figures from WWII for a fictitious plot about raising clones of Hitler for the Fourth Reich. Aside from historical facts, you can also find out the truth of whether sword canes are lawfully allowed in the US, and enjoy all it all over our White Sand Cocktail, using our new and much beloved Leblon Cachaça rum. Don't forget, new episodes weekly during June and July! See you next week, lieblings!

If you, too, have felt serial killer urges at any point while dealing with people in a grocery store... well, officially we have to tell you: you should seek counseling. Unofficially, you should know you're not alone and might find this episode where we read two serial killer books a little validating. "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" by Jeff Lindsay may have a ring of familiarity to it, as it serves as the basis for the Showtime show "Dexter". Trying to switch things up this week, the crew chose beers and reaffirmed, though it wasn't really in question, that we are just not really beer people. We tried, y'all. This book was paired with two brews from Rogue Brewing Company, the aptly named Dead Guy Ale and a Chocolate Nitro Stout.Rounding out our episode with a little grocery store rage, torture, and some other kinks and fetishes we just can't mention here, is "Cold Cole Heart" by K. Webster. You'll find our Flying Dog: Raging Bitch beer pairs perfectly with a few of the characters mentioned therein.Happy to see us, or is that just a book in your pocket? For the time being, Lit & Liquor is back to weekly episodes through the summer! Hey, we gotta make this quarantine drinking feel like it's accomplishing something!

Behold a momentous day in L&L history: we knew when a fruit was in season...and we actually managed to get it and use it in our drink. Dragonfruit, this time, we win. Anyways.This week we're back into (and I quote), "some weird ass alien shit" with "Dawn" by Octavia Butler. Over an In Case of Alien Invasion cocktail, we discuss some interesting morality questions, survival of the fittest, and as was already hinted, just some really weird alien sex things.Moving on to bloodier and more intense but definitely more interesting things, our second book was a debut novel, "Rage of Dragons" by Evan Winter. This book earned a rare average rating of four shots and was enjoyed by everyone around the table. Our discussion lasted so long, you'll probably want to make the Dragonfruit Mimosa a double or triple.

You really thought we'd let quarantine pass us by without discussing how it's just an excuse for us all to drink? Join us for all kinds of Corona madness--the beer, the seltzer, the refresca, the mixed drink, and of course the virus--in a special liquor-only episode.

As is so often the case for Lit & Liquor, this week we drunkenly stumbled into a new and popular genre: Brazilian crime novels. Who knew? From a list of the top thrillers in this category, we chose "Blood of the Wicked" by Leighton Gage, and spoiler alerts: there was a lot of blood, and there was a lot of wickedness. Join us in the thrilling world of Brazil, corrupt cops, street gangs and, of course, excellent rum.It must be said, as hinted in our title, that we owe the rum world an apology. For one, we finally learned how to pronounce the word 'cachaça' and our initial efforts were, well... Let's just move on from that dark time. Secondly, given Ashley and Kassandra's love of the drink called a caipirinha and the knowledge it contains the (previously thought to be) ghastly cachaça rum, they went on a quest to find the best cachaça rum for a caipirinha and see if it lived up to their memory.We're very happy to report that Leblon Cachaça is worlds different from the motor oil packaged as alcohol from our Bamboo Bullshit episode, and the difference has to be tasted to be believed. Cachaça is also one of Brazil's most popular spirits, leading to a most excellent companion for this book.

Our first full book and liquor episode for season three dives right into current culture, since we never met a Netflix show we couldn't binge watch by justifying it's 'for the podcast, all for the podcast!' Not to mention, with a shirtless Henry Cavill for Ashley and Kassandra, and some great fantasy for Sam, there was happiness all around the drinking table this week.Our book was "The Last Wish" by Andrzej Sapkowski, a collection of short stories from which the Netflix tv show "The Witcher" is based. While the concepts and world in the book made for interesting reading, the show won as our favorite by a wide margin. And not at all because of the beautiful and often nude members of both sexes there within... Lit & Liquor is nothing but class, folks. And while our Cat Potion cocktail does not, in fact, offer any illumination into the confusing timeline of the show, it's still damn delicious.

Don't worry y'all, CoronaVirus hasn't got us yet! We were just unable to talk due to our mouths being stuffed with quarantine snacks. In these uncertain times, we all need a laugh, so look no further than our somewhat-New Orleans themed kick off to the start of Lit & Liquor's third season! Our anniversary is technically in February, so we would consider ourselves only fashionably late to the upload. If you're new to the listening, welcome! If you've been with us since the beginning... well, you probably know way too much about us so we won't sit here and make any threats.Dig through those cupboards for the last crumbs of those quarantine snacks and grab the beer from the back of the fridge you never thought you'd finish off, and cheers to season 3!

It's completely unclear to us why we continue to do these blind tastings, especially when escalating to tequila as we did this week, but just assume all the cocktails and bad trashy romances have finally rotted out our brains, just like Mom always warned. This tasting went just about exactly as you might imagine in your mind, but at least we got some cool information on the background of tequila and margaritas. To decide what tequilas made the cut this time around, we went with silver tequila and by price range, starting with a $10 tequila and going up to $50+. Our contenders were Casa Dragones, Avion Silver, El Mayor Blanco, El Tesoro, and Coa De Jima. Will the most expensive again rank last place? Will Sam FINALLY win a liquor tasting badge, or even just get ONE guess right? Will Kassandra make it through this without vomiting? Will Ashley give another tequila-fueled rendition of "Strawberry Wine" like on Cinco de Mayo?Only listening will get you the truth. This is our last episode of Season 2, which only took two years instead of one... Sorry for the ghosting again, guys. Next episode we'll be doing a Season 3 Kick-Off special with some New Orleans inspired drinks!

We always seek to educate and better ourselves at Lit & Liquor, and we like to think all our listeners reap the benefits of our investigations, trials, errors, and the occasional success. This week, you can tune in and discover some rather fascinating information, like that Gypsies used it be called Egyptians because no one knew anything back in the day about anything, that impersonating said Egyptian AKA Gypsy was illegal and you could be transported to Australia for daring to do so, and that Edmund Kemper killed his grandparents when he was just 15 years old.Whoops, sorry about that dark turn, but we felt it was best to dive right in. This week instead of a book per se, we found an interesting article about notorious serial killer Edmund Kemper and his work narrating audiobooks for The Blind Project. Naturally, we had to investigate. Combining the article with two episodes of The Serial Killer Podcast (which we highly recommend), a few episode of the Netflix show Mind Hunter in which Kemper is interviewed, and to cap it all off, we of course went down some deep dark Wikipedia, Reddit, Youtube, and other nefarious inter web black holes in our quest to bring you the best, if not most reliable, information on these and other topics. Grab a bottle of the appropriately named 19 Crimes Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon and maybe a friend for this disturbing episode and enjoy!Next episode, join us as we do another blind tasting, this time with Tequila and, you guessed it, regretted all the things!

It's inevitable that just about every show or celebrity or author becomes a sell out at some point. We're sorry to say we reached that point. We betrayed you, listeners. Deeply but hopefully not irrevocably. That's right. We went digital this week. 100% digital. But if you can move past that, read and listen on! On deck--or should we say on screen--this week are two different apps, Galatea and Webtoonz. While these are fundamentally different apps with very different story content, they both offer a different type of reading experience than a typical book. We had to satisfy our curiosity and also be able to say, "we did that before it was cool" just in case the whole thing explodes in the future. Our know it all status is very important to us.On Galatea, an immersive reading app with sound and visual effects, we read "The Millennium Wolves". We don't want to say the 'werewolf porn' was an appropriate title or anything, but there were a few chapters rated three red peppers and, well, we can't just give it all away right here in the bio. This was paired with a beautiful if name-out-of-date Hocus Pocus Witches Brew.Webtoonz, an online comic/manga app, led us to "Purple Hyacinth", whose bloody badassery was a shock after the soft touch of our werewolves but paired well with our Bloody Old Fashioned*. *real blood is optional. No one was harmed in the making of this podcast.

We tried to have a nice, classy, literary Christmas episode, we really did. We thought we did everything right, choosing a nice holiday book like "The Hogfather" by Terry Pratchet, and each bringing a Christmas cocktail of our own choosing: Kassandra's Cranpeary Martini, Ashley's Fauxloma, and Sam's Hogswatch Night Cocktail.But the key words here should have been "each brought a cocktail of our choosing". With three cocktails in our hands, all it took was Ashley and Kassandra bringing up gas station bathrooms and things just went down the pipes from there. However, if you're in the market for a guide to gas station bathrooms and how to choose the best ones, you'll find this episode to be remarkably helpful.To hear this and other topics that are vaguely related to Christmas or not at all, listen on! A very merry Christmas and warmest holiday greetings from us here at Lit & Liquor headquarters!

If you've been waiting on pins and needles for a great suggestion for a great new naughty boss romance since our last romance novel face off....sorry, but you'll have to wait even longer. Oops, did we say that out loud? Our wants for this week ended up being a challenge, as it turns out badass female Asian ninja warrior books are a rare niche. Not to mention finding a female billionaire boss romance to pair with it. But like always, L&L found a way to persevere, mostly thanks to our cocktails. Our Lotus Blossom cocktail made a nice pairing for "Butterfly Swords" by Jeannie Lin. In a surprising twist (or maybe not so surprising if you know Kassandra and Ashley's viewpoints on romance novels) our biggest complaint was how dare she go fade to black on us. On the other side of the ring, with terrible odds coming out of the betting pools, is "Sweet Surrendering" by Chelsea M. Cameron. If you were disappointed in lack of kinky office sex in our last bad boss pick, you'll get your fill on this book. Again. And again. And again. And... well, we think you're getting the idea. And if you lost money in the aforementioned betting pool, our Sweet, Sweet Surrendering cocktail will at least help to ease the pain.

After a good (omen) time last episode, this week we venture to a darker side by delving into World War II, exploring all things in bombings, mutti's in suitcases, and marital affairs. First up is "The Aftermath" by Rhidian Brook, which explores the British occupation of Hamburg--which was nearly razed to the ground in one weekend of bombings--directly after the end of WWII. If the title sounds a little familiar, you may be thinking of the 2019 movie by the same name which of course, we watched to review and contrast. In both cases, we sort of wished the Tom Collins cocktail we drank along with it had been a double. Or a triple. Rounding out the episode is a nonfiction collection of essays and lectures by WG Sebald entitled, "On The Natural History of Destruction". This was paired with a nice German Reisling, but unfortunately, nothing can soften the blow of the true horror stories from this war. With all these cheerful stories in mind, the team here at Lit & Liquor wishes you all a very happy Thanksgiving!

It's a duel of the crackers, and Cheez Its won the prize, thanks to their ally, wine. Only to ultimately lose when Lit & Liquor devoured them.Today we explored the unconventional pairing of Cheez Its and wine. Per Cheez Its website, there are certain types of flavors that pair better with certain wines, and for your sake, we took on this challenge without hesitation...as we always do when wine is involved. We also welcome back one of our guest stars, Momma Kush, who also bravely takes on any wine-related challenge. To go with our unconventional food and wine pairing, we read a book with an unconventional character pairing, "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman. To spice things up even further, we watched the 2019 television show by the same name. This week, we're pleased to report favorable results all the way around.

We're like a dog with a bone about Stephen King, especially when it comes to 'It', so here's the review you probably weren't even waiting for! Our thoughts on the movie It: Chapter 2. We talk all things first movie, new movie, oldest movie from the 1990's, the book, casting, and just about everything else you can think of. If you're looking for a seasonal cocktail to enjoy with this, we can't say we recommend our Rosemary Cinnamon Old Fashioned, but if you're one of those insane fans of Fireball Whiskey, drink on and enjoy!

Lit & Liquor is no stranger to three things: poorly written literature (see: every other episode), alcohol that tastes more like motor oil (see: Bamboo Bullshit or Gin for the Win), and high emotions (see: every episode we've ever made). However, we don't know that the emotion of disappointment has ever run so high and strong as this week when we read "Bloody Rose" by Nicholas Eames. His debut novel, "Kings of the Wylde", was our top-rated book ever and is frequently brought up in later podcasts, as dutiful listeners can well attest. "Bloody Rose", on the other hand, stole something precious from us: approximately 8-16 hours of our life that we will never, EVER get back. Listen on if you dare, and we hope you have a wine as good as our Intrinsic Cabernet Sauvignon in which to drown yourself--er, your disappointment.(A special thank you to Amazon reviewer EOD Phil for our episode title)