Kevin Revolinski's Blog

Every year I commit to reading at least 52 books. Last year seemed like a notably great year for novels, and thanks to my local library I managed to read an abundance of them. I ended up with 53 reads but here are the best of the best. There were others but I can’t list all 53, can I? Follow me on GoodReads as I pursue the GoodReads Challenge again in 2022.

If you want to purchase any of these books, please consider using my Bookshop.org link, where I get a tiny bit of the profit as an affiliate and the organization contributes to indie bookstores! I’m including ‘Zon affiliate links as well if you go that route…

Matrix by Lauren Groff

I do love those novels with bits of history and its characters strewn throughout. I also enjoy religious experiences that don’t insist on the miracles, straddling that line between natural and supernatural, committing to the exceptionalism of some humans who take it on. This is a nunnery led by a reluctant bastard child abbess who finds her greatness where she expected hopelessness. It’s a woman’s world on an “island” in a 12th century man’s world. Great characters, clever story, very satisfying.  Amazon link

Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa

I spent a year in Guatemala. It’s a small country and like the proverbial small world, you tend to run into people. My housemom during a language homestay was a Guzman in Xela, related to the Guatemalan President the CIA drove out in 1954. Waiting for a plane at the airport, I met someone who took up arms against one in the string of more recent dictatorships, and whose parents also were deeply involved in both upper level government resistance and the rebels in the hills. Former soldiers, former rebels, survivors. Another house mom told me about seeing her brother shot dead in the front doorway, of her husband being beaten and questioned… and returned alive — which meant they needed to leave their village as no one would ever trust that he hadn’t collaborated.

This novel is based on actual events and characters, and much of this material is familiar to anyone who has spent some time in Guatemala making friends and acquaintances. I await a review from my most deeply connected friend about how accurate this is, but I imagine other than the imagined conversations and some other details, the history is spot on. It’s a great read though saddening and maddening knowing that so much suffering stems from misunderstandings, ignorance, fear, hatred, racism, good intentions, and just plain greed and lust for power. But if you want to understand the political history of Latin America through the 20th century, this is not a bad place to start. Amazon link

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott

A fresh new way of looking at a painful subject: being Black in the USA. At times crazy, weird and funny, at other times moving, frustrating, enraging, you’ll not encounter anything like this anytime soon. Reminds me of Vonnegut in some broad ways — the use of humor, the human themes, dealing with trauma in an unusual way. Amazon link

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

At its simplest an intriguing story of a single father with a troubled boy “on the spectrum,” but much more a book of ideas, about grief, about the vastness and magic of the universe, about the environment and bad politics (seriously relevant to this moment in history). It rises from fascinating to devastatingly good. Being set in my hometown of Madison, WI gives it a little extra charm too.
Not an epic story like The Overstory, though the themes are as big or bigger, but more of a personal inner journey. A quick read that won’t leave you quickly. Amazon link

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Brilliant. Threads and returns worthy of Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. So much going on here. On living and remembering and protecting memory and it’s inevitable loss, the Baker of books, mother Earth, dualities such as war and peace, of returning home finally. “Forgetting, he is learning, is how the world heals.” It’s long, but the chapters are short and hop around to keep it moving. Amazon link

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

5 on the typical GoodReads scale, maybe 4.5 on the Amor Towles Personal Scale. Like his two previous novels, it engages right from the get-go. So much great stuff here: the arcing story told from varying perspectives/characters; the many backstories/side stories that develop all the characters; intertwining thoughts about life and choices, elements of literature and the Great Hero stories, history and setting of the time period. I felt a wobble in my suspended disbelief a little at around page 420 for a short stretch. But that says something, no? Just the fact that I whipped through this 575-page book in just a few days is telling, and if it was me or the story that hesitated there — who can say? This is another great book, one that will surely come to mind again and again over the years much as Gentleman In Moscow does.   Amazon link

Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson

Set along the edge of the redwoods during a time when logging sustained, barely, rough communities of loggers and their families struggling to get by. When defoliants were sprayed willy nilly without regard for environment or humans. This story takes you inside with brutal honesty and yet sensitivity to the struggles of the characters. I found it all absorbing and the writing is top-notch and beautiful. This is a big book but never let me drift away or not care. Some uncomfortable realities when humankind finds itself at odds with nature but living on a thread. Also, makes me want to run go see the redwoods one more time. Amazon link

Godspeed by Nickolas Butler

Butler’s latest work takes a turn out west with a thrilling page-turner that still provides rich language, evocative description of land and setting, passages you want to slow down for and really savor. Immersive in the subcultures of unentitled Jackson residents and construction contractors. Always thought-provoking, sometimes hair-raising, with solid characters you cheer and groan for. A very satisfying read that sticks with you.

The three contractors at the center of this story are convinced that this one incredible job is going to change their lives and make them rich. I started to think of Steinbeck’s morality tale The Pearl, but Godspeed was never so blunt or contrived. Then it occurred to me: the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. My dim lights came on slowly and I remembered Butler’s dedication in the front of the book… to author B. Traven. And when things don’t go quite right, the story has you cringing for the characters as Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan does. What a great read! Amazon link

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

With real-life parallels to the horrors of a “reform” school with unmarked graves, this novel brings Truth and tells an engaging, often disheartening, story of racism, inhumanity, in/justice, and the endurance of the spirit and the scars. At 210 pages, it is not a cumbersome story, and despite the brutality, which I wouldn’t say is graphic but no less impactful, it is not a book you want to put down or look away from. Right up until the last pages. Tremendous. Important. Enduring. Amazon link

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Really liked this one, and a return to his “problem-solving” plot in The Martian. While that novel stuck fairly close to (nearly) available science and tech, this one was a bit more speculative. I loved the ideas, the solutions, the earth politics in the flashbacks, and the surprises out there in space. The character, a school teacher, could be a little corny at times, and the one time he dropped an F-bomb actually stood out among the million other gee whiz dog gone language. And there was plenty of cause for him to grunt an expletive. The author’s respect for hard science is welcome. I waffle here on 4.5. Fun read! Amazon link

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

Can’t say enough great things about this book. The audience is short story writers but any fan of the art of storytelling should enjoy it. Plus you read some classic Russian lit. I marked so many passages to remember and share that I may as well just give copies of the entire book to people. It must be great to be in one of his classes. And extra credit points of a Green Bay Packers reference. Amazon link

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Excellent writing and storytelling. Threads of the story one in the past go back and forth gradually coming together at the end of the book. Each thread has its first chapter and both of them hook you. Then follow some fascinating characters that you care about in a rich and unique natural environment by the sea in Carolina from 1955-70. the star of the show is a poor outcast and abused white girl who is coming of age and nevertheless manages to find her own way when the adults have let her down. The last few pages sort of wavered for me like an amazing gymnast who stuck the landing yet wobbled just a tiny bit. The writing is really great.  Amazon link

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

I loved this. Great characters, thoughtful material, a good heart to it. My first Patchett book and I can’t wait to read another. Just lovely. Amazon link

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Quite the way to start the New Year. Phenomenal writing. The long passages of the loss of a child are heartbreaking, the sort of reading you feel in your gut, and words that may move you to tears. Agnes (Anne Hathaway’s likely real first name according to her father’s will) is a fascinating, woman of the earth type, a healer and empath with preternatural senses about people and the natural world. Never afraid to march to her own drum, she’s whispered about by the neighbors and the in-laws. The plague segments, especially the literary version of contact tracing, are all too relevant to real life at the moment. Not to be lost in the story of loss is the perspective of a wife left behind while the husband pursues a greatness we know even centuries later, a situation that seems almost cruel in the moment. O’Farrell puts you in the village of Elizabethan times and makes everyday life and suffering the focus, even unto Shakespeare’s work. What a great book!  Amazon link

How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics by Michael Pollan

Absolutely fascinating, and I daresay, mind-changing. I’d always been a bit curious about psychedelics as they were unfairly lumped together with various hard drugs. Pollan does an excellent job of laying out the history of research, the many apparent benefits not only to afflicted people but to healthy adults, and an analysis of just how the brain works, the ego, consciousness, life philosophy, mystical experiences, and so much more. Then as any good journalist/scientist would do, he goes out an experiences each of the psychedelic medicines under the supervision of therapist guides. The summary is definitely in support of the use of these chemicals, but not in a frivolous recreational manner. I saw a lot of my own worries and bad-thinking habits in here, as well as those of friends, and it made me wonder what an experience such as his might do for me. A fascinating look at a sort of spiritual approach to their use as well as a proven treatment for those suffering from depression and addiction and finding no relief in big pharma solutions. I highly recommend this book. Amazon link

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Fascinating read. The hard science and economics portions of this are quite informative and thought-provoking, imagining in a speculative plot what might happen in our uncertain future with climate change and humankind’s resistance to take action. The plot of the novel follows two main characters through 563 pages, but a fair portion of the book is dedicated to interspersed chapters of isolated incidents that reveal the consequences and various experiences around the globe, summaries of task-forces or summits about what to do, and even just straight up explanations of econ theories and potential remedies. Story-wise, this can feel a little weak, but the chapters (over 100) are short to prevent the book from getting bogged down, and the information in the segments parallel to the plot is worth the read all by itself. A great eco-read with no illusions about how bad things will get, but with enough real human elements and ideas to suggest there may be hope. Amazon link

The stories in my collection may seem a bit diverse, set in places from the Midwest to the Mideast, with plots dramatic and dark to light and reflective, but what unifies them are the characters who have arrived at a point at life that they aren’t entirely comfortable with, and they struggle with whether they should just dig in and deal with it or get the hell out. Such is the case with “Maple Seeds,” the shortest and gentlest of the bunch, about a man who’s still single but surrounded by couples and suddenly conscious of it as he waits for friends and notices an intriguing woman in the distance.

I love to incorporate setting and ordinary objects into a story. As an author I am contriving that I suppose, but in real life I find these coincidentally appropriate elements almost unbearably common. Something happens to you — a breakup, a promotion, a sunny day — and the perfect song comes on the radio the moment you start the car like the soundtrack to a movie. Or maybe your mind, cued up with the emotions and thoughts of something personal, filters your surroundings to notice that discarded item at the curb, to zoom in on that particular billboard or seemingly familiar stranger passing or that relevant brand of snack or soda you swear you haven’t seen in decades yet there it is, right at the moment your memories from that era have resurfaced. “You couldn’t make that up!” we say. From one of my favorite cult movies Repo Man, this is the “lattice of coincidence that lays on top of things.” And I’m a big fan of it.

Maple seeds are as common as anything in the Midwest, helicoptering down everywhere in the summer, scattering in the wind. Perfect for a metaphor, and not far off from a New Testament parable about seeds that fall by chance on rocky soil vs. those that find themselves in good earth. Perfect for a fellow contemplating his lot in life too.

And here’s an appropriate beer to pair with it. From Collaborative Arts Brewing’s joint effort with Mikerphone Brewing: Origin of Darkness: an Imperial Stout aged in Maple Syrup Bourbon Barrels with Walnuts. Big and rich in a small can, and a little goes a long way. It should leave you mellowed and contemplative, much like the narrator of the story pondering a stranger in the distance, imagining another life.

Buy the paperback or ebook – follow the links below!

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Many of us have that urge from time to time to run away from it all. Everywhere I’ve gone in the world I’ve found those sorts of people, either hiding out solo, going native, or in their own little community of fellow cultural refugees. Square pegs at their port of origin who find solace or purpose in a foreign land. Tropical islands and Margaritaville may work for some, especially the winter burnouts of the Upper Midwest. “Small Hope Bay” is set on a small island in the Caribbean with a protagonist from Minnesota seeking love in paradise found. There is an actual place called Small Hope Bay in the Bahamas and a great song of the same name by Marianne Flemming (with whom I’ve played and recorded music much over the years!). It’s a perfect name for the story of uncertain hopes.

My very first book collaboration was in 2005 as one of several co-authors for Rough Guide to the Caribbean 2 (that’s me “et al” or “plus 5 more” so if you expand it twice, you’ll finally see my name). So began my full-time travel-writing career. While I’ve loved visiting the islands, and once spent a fantastic month hosted by friends on St. Croix getting some writing and head-clearing done while learning to make Pain Killers, I am not really an island person. For me there is a sense of being trapped. Can one be trapped in paradise and it still be paradise? Did God do Adam and Eve a favor by bum-rushing them out of the Garden of Margaritaville into the larger world? The short story partly wonders if a loss may be a gain on the other side. Depends on your dominant eye, I suppose.

Here’s an IPA from an island in a different sea from the story. Kona Brewing’s Hanalei Island IPA pairs nicely with “Small Hope Bay.” Brewed with a bit of guava, orange, and my favorite, passionfruit (also appropriate for the story?). I suppose a Corona and lime or a Pain Killer with Pusser’s rum and Coco Lopez would work alright too.

Buy the paperback or ebook – follow the links below!

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When the present doesn’t satisfy us, we often either look forward to, or at least hope for, the future (hello, 2020!); or we seek refuge in nostalgia, wistful notions of a past that once gave us comfort. The latter is central to this story. “On a Raft in Green Water” was published by South Dakota Review and as I recall the editor liked it for its emotional appeal. It is set in a cabin in the woods, where a man has retreated to savor memories of his childhood, his happy place. The inspiration for this one was an old photograph from when I was a child too young to remember the moment, floating on an air mattress at a lake up north. I found it while paging through an family photo album years ago with my mother.

It’s disorienting to be presented with evidence of something you don’t recall. Similarly, there is dissonance when your memories come up against a contradictory but more reliable source — a photo, a written account, a group of friends who are in agreement that you’ve got it wrong — and you are forced to realize your experience is manufactured or at least given a makeover.

We are the writers of our own screenplays, interpreters of the scenes based on data filtered through subjective senses. We are unreliable narrators. As in Kurosawa’s Rashomon, four witnesses revisit the past and come back with four starkly different versions of the “truth.” From a Fiona Apple song I’ve long been fond of: “He said, ‘It’s all in your head’ and I said, ‘So is everything’ But he didn’t get it.” Witnesses are the least reliable form of evidence.

Last week I was watching an old episode of Boston Legal wherein a minor was fighting her parents for the right to take a pill that would erase her memory of a recent traumatic assault. A drug of forgetting. And like a lot of stranger-than-fiction things in these shows that take on social issues, this is an actual thing. Take a pill and skip perhaps a lifetime of PTSD. Would you do it? Would you swallow the pill if there were a risk it might nip at some of the other memories as well? How valuable are our tragedies in the creation of our selves, our character? Then again, how do our memories — not just the bad ones, but sometimes the good ones — prevent us from moving forward, from finding new happy places? Viktor Frankl, who lost his whole family but survived four Nazi concentration camps, wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, a chronicle of his experiences both in the camps and as a psychotherapist treating suicidal patients. He called his philosophy logotherapy: he believed that our life purpose is to seek a purpose. Pain wasn’t the enemy, but lack of purpose could be fatal. Perhaps our protagonist finds one in the end. (Read Stealing Away and find out.)

“To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.” So said Homer … uh, Simpson. This story’s recommended beers are paired with the central inanimate object of the story: the cabin. So we have New Glarus Cabin Fever, a honey bock, and Third Space Brewing’s Happy Place Midwest Pale Ale. (Both breweries are featured in my road-trip guidebook Wisconsin’s Best Beer Guide, by the way.)

Buy the paperback or ebook – follow the links below!

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I had just come back from an overseas teaching assignment and crashed on on a couch on the back porch of a good friend’s house for the summer. He had accumulated all my junk mail for the year, and within the box I found a magazine, Westview. Looked literary, had my name on it. Odd, I thought. I opened it up and there it was — my first published short story. The magazine paid in copies, as many did and still do, but I was over the moon. Wow, someone liked my stuff? The story is set in Mexico, thus, this week’s beer pairing for a story is a Mexican-style lager from Great Lakes Brewing.

“Thirst” follows a couple of siblings, orphans who occasionally wander out of the orphanage yard to explore the desert-like landscape in high-plains Mexico. Then one day they witness a violent act. They deal with it in their own ways, while the adults who sense something is wrong have completely different concerns about the them and don’t understand. The kids are certain they are going to have to take care of matters on their own.

Like all stories in this book, this is fiction. But I did visit the state of Chihuahua in Mexico on a couple volunteer trips over 25 years ago. We were guests of the community and learned about their successes with food, agriculture, and funeral co-ops, a community clinic, and an orphanage with more than 60 of the sweetest kids you’d ever find. Everyone had a story, from indigent parents who simply couldn’t take care of them to very tragic tales that shake you to your foundations.

We brought donations to them, learned how the facility operated, and played with the kids with some new (for them) toys. A seven-year-old girl latched on to me and showed me around, and we became buds for a couple days. I sneaked her a tube of hand cream for her terribly chapped hands and she hid it in the back of a drawer. She’d lean to the side and whisper behind her hand to me “La crema” and grin with her little secret. The day we left, she wrote our names in chalk on a big rusted water tank near the playground. The whole trip had been quite an education about community and poverty.

So the next year when I had the opportunity to go again, I did. A bigger trip, more participants, more supplies, and a return to the orphanage so the new travelers could learn about it. I found my little friend, but I don’t think she remembered me. Maybe the hand cream story helped to remind her. (Probably not.) But she stuck by me again, and as we sat on the floor listening to the director talk about the origins of some of the kids, she played next to me, while I half listened to the stories. A particularly gruesome one involved a young widow who was murdered by an abusive boyfriend who then raped her child. Her two other children came home to find the horrific aftermath. They had no family left; they ended up here.

As we sat there listening, my little friend played with a balloon someone had handed her. We bounced it back and forth between us. Until it popped. She erupted in a horrifying wail, tears streaming as she rolled up into a tense ball, red-faced and screaming. Staff quickly gathered her up and took her away to her room. I worried I had done something to trigger her breakdown, but it was the balloon, of course. Though it was not a household term then like it is now, I had basically witnessed a PTSD moment. She was the little girl in the story, a staff person explained.

That ended the visit, and we said our goodbyes, walked out into the night, and got on board the old school bus that had brought us there. I sat in the back and just sobbed in the dark on the ride back to town.

This short story is not her story at all, but I wanted to write something in which a girl nearly alone in the world finds her way forward.

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I spent a year teaching in Turkey, and the experience was so amazing for me that I felt compelled to write a book about it: The Yogurt Man Cometh: Tales of an American Teacher in Turkey. The cultural experience, the travels through historical places, and the dear friends I made combined to make an incomparable year in my life. I also got sick on some travels in Egypt and Syria and felt what it was like to be laid low far from family and home.

This short story has elements from my travels, details, images, though none of the characters. This story is unusual in a couple of ways. First, I started it at a picnic table in a friend’s backyard in Madison years ago… merely as a writing exercise. Every writer has or is looking for ways to get words flowing. I am not sure I have one in particular, but this time I picked a random writing prompt and wrote to see where it took me. “A man walks into Antioch…” That was it. Off I went trying to sort out why he was there, what would happen to him, had happened to him. The ancient city still exists in Turkey, Antakya, near the border of Syria, and I’ve been through there a couple times. There is a famous museum of mosaics there as well.

The second unusual bit about the story was my approach to it: It is mostly nonlinear with a scattering of pieces that gradually make a clearer story. One of my former professors who has read Stealing Away: Stories felt it was the best story in the bunch: “It’s postmodern, but not in a show-offy way; it’s just written the way it needs to be.” This story also appeared in Red Wheelbarrow, a national literary magazine produced by De Anza College in California (Vol. 7, 2006).

I found two beers I liked for this story. Mad Hatter American IPA from New Holland Brewing in Michigan and Mosey IPA from Vintage Brewing in Wisconsin. The Mad Hatter seems about right for two of the characters in the book. One perhaps clinically mad and the other perhaps in a breakdown sort of way. And Mosey is packed with Mosaic hops, so there’s the connection. I enjoyed both, but if forced to choose, I preferred those Mosaic hops!

Buy the paperback or ebook – follow the links below!

 

 

 

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If 2020 taught me anything it was that staying informed is definitely important, but being glued to the news is not healthy either. “Sorting Things Out” is the story of a bookkeeper who starts following a horrible, unsettling local crime story. She tries to imagine the events based on the limited details of the newspaper stories and an old photograph of the victim. Her obsession starts to affect her own life and how she views it.

Inspiration for stories comes from anywhere you find it: I have followed news stories, picking up the daily paper (or loading the news site) daily in search of new developments. I have PDF copies of the newspaper stories that chronicle the tragic death of a great-grandfather nearly a century ago who went missing and his body remained unidentified for a few days. Each day’s edition revealed more details. It’s a macabre affair to follow such a story, but humans are curious and always want to know what happened and what happens next.

The beer I found to pair with it is a Hazy IPA from Wisconsin’s Central Waters Brewing: Unsettled. Sometimes, like in the story, life shakes things up and things become unclear. Delicious beer and ironically may help you settle back down after reading the story. It’s a bit tense at some points. Give it a read, ebook or paperback. Available in my Shop or via your local bookstore or any of these links below. At the bottom of the page, drop your email to keep up to date on my books and speaking events. (That includes outdoor guides and beer books!) Thanks for reading! K.

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Pairing Beers with Short Stories

The Butcher Boys, the second story in the collection, is one of my personal favorites, partly because the nicer details reminded me of my small-town Wisconsin childhood, and partly in the way the story evolved unexpectedly as I wrote it. I let it stew for a while because I wasn’t sure how it might end or when. Was this maybe a novel? But it took a turn that even surprised me. (No spoilers here.) I really hadn’t planned for the turn, but then I knew it had to happen. And damn if I wasn’t stuck again. I couldn’t drop a reader on their head and walk off. There was more here. Back to the rumination stage.

That’s when I realized I didn’t have all my characters yet. As if remembering childhood friends and then looking at an old group photo and realizing you’d left a couple people out. So, like shuffling cards, new bits slipped into place, and suddenly I had a full deck. Again, a didn’t-see-that-coming moment. You’ll hear that a lot from writers, and for a long time it sounded kooky to me until I had a couple moments. But rather than feeling like I’d thought of a solution, I felt unsettled, as if I were reading it myself for the first time. Robert Olen Butler addresses that in his excellent book From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction.

The beer to go with this one — and I definitely needed a drink after this — is Slugfest from Summit Brewing (A good Midwestern beer for a story in a Midwestern town). Appropriate because the narrator recalls an epic one-sided slugfest from his childhood, and the action of the story takes place years ago, around the time when those punches were thrown. There may be a bit of baseball involved too.

Pairing Beers with Short Stories

Next up, story #12 of 12: “An Inside Job.” The narrator is a struggling guitar player whose hopes are pinned on getting a break someday — but in the meantime he works temp jobs. An odd assignment puts him in a surreal industrial landscape alone with a stoner-philosopher, and things go a little off the rails.

In between steady jobs, I’ve done my time at temp services and survived to tell the tales. Lots of office work, but nearly cut the tip of my finger off once at a factory gig; nine stitches and no health insurance. Not sure which hurt worse. Used potent chemicals to scrub the black, oily soot off the walls in an industrial garage after all the giant tires of the heavy equipment burned in a fire. The right-turn warning and blue-and-white stripe reflective decals on the back of the big orange Schneider National semi-truck trailers? I punched those big stickers out of their die-cut trim for a few weeks. Daily headaches from the fumes. Fun stuff for a buck!

This fictional story captures some of that uncertainty, and the days that are always something new, yet oddly still the same. More proof positive that pretty much any life experience can work its way into your writing in some fashion — or make you work harder to succeed elsewhere.

The beer to pair with this: Axe Man, an edgy India Pale Ale from Minnesota’s Surly Brewing. “Axe” is slang for an electric guitar, though actually the term originated with jazz players in the 1950s and referred to the saxophone. Over time the rockin’ guitar players shredding out there on stage took the term. Frankly, it suits the guitar better, I think. Pictured is my own Fender Deluxe Nashville Telecaster.

The beer’s own label offers the descriptor hoppy, loud (like an axe man would have it), and “dank,” which in the Queen’s English (according to Oxford) means “(especially of a place) slightly wet, cold and unpleasant” — that nails the story setting. In slang it also refers to sticky, stinky, high-quality marijuana. Again, a tie to someone in the story. But for craft beer, it indicates high-alcohol brews with a green, funky, resinous aroma and flavor. By the way the genus of hops (Humulus) and that of marijuana (Cannabis) are, in fact, in the same family, Cannabinaceae. That’s quite the pairing tie-in, but don’t worry, this is by no means just a pot story.

Pairing Beers with Short Stories

The title track to the album you can say. Diane, a teenage girl being raised by a struggling single mom, decides to run off with her boyfriend who has got a “great” idea for how to fund their flight from a tired town in the middle of cornfields in Illinois. What she calls “fancy paper” is key to making their scam work. No spoilers here, but while the scheme itself is a (literal) trip, the relationship between mother and daughter is the real story here IMHO. The idea originally came to me a few years ago when I leapt into the 21st century, selling my ’97 Lumina, which you can see on the book cover, for 300 bucks.

Fancy Papers Hazy IPA is brewed by Cigar City, a Tampa-based brewery and one of Florida’s largest. “Fresh-cut grass and tangerine on the nose are complemented by white wine grape and bread-like aromas. Flavors of guava, melon, and lime leaf present themselves harmoniously with sauvignon blanc and bready malt flavors playing supporting roles.”