Literary Starbucks: Fresh-Brewed, Half-Caf, No-Whip Bookish Humor

by Nora Anderson Katz, Wilson Isaac Josephson, Jill Madeline Poskanzer

From the creators of the eponymous viral Tumblr comes a single day with your favorite authors in one Twilight-Zone-esque Starbucks...

Ever wonder which intricate, elaborately-named drinks might be consumed if your favorite authors and characters wandered into a Starbucks? How many pumpkin lattes J.K. Rowling would drink? Or if Cormac McCarthy needed caffeine, which latte would be laconic enough? Look no further; LITERARY STARBUCKS explores such pressing matters with humor and erudition. Set over the course of a single day, and replete with puns and satirized literary styles, the three authors go darker, stronger, and more global than the blog in book format, including illustrations by acclaimed New Yorker cover artist and cartoonist Harry Bliss.

Genres: Humor, Books About Books, Nonfiction, Poetry, Literature, Writing

240 pages, Hardcover

First published August 23, 2016

Reviews

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

i love the idea behind this book, but i'm only medium on it in terms of "did it amuse me?"

first of all, i know nothing about starbucks. maybe i lack a sophisticated enough palate - i live on dunkin' donuts and NYFC deli coffee, but starbucks just tastes acidic and burnt to me, and i don't like flavored coffee in general or understand why anyone would want to huck so much extra stuff into their coffee. i have overheard other people ordering coffee there and been equal parts impressed and dismayed at their specificity. on the one hand, it's great to be a person who knows exactly what you want, but should a coffee order take more then twenty seconds to relay? i tried that pumpkin spice coffee once, to see what that cult was all about, and it was a gross cult, indeed. however, all rules have exceptions, and i find that their raspberry latte is pretty damn palatable.

but so maybe i'm missing some of the jokes in this book since i'm not starbucks-savvy. and maybe it's hilarious that tolkien would order a "shaken iced blackberry mojito tea lemonade," but i found myself wondering "that's actually a thing people drink?" instead of focusing on the rest of the joke. which wasn't that funny, anyway.

because here's the thing - there are a LOT of jokes in this book - it's pretty big for a book of this kind. it was birthed from a tumblr (http://literarystarbucks.com/), as so many humor books are, so they weren't lacking for material, but it's not always as clever or funny as it thinks it is.

and some of that is down to my not having read every single book this references, or of not having more than a passing familiarity with some of the authors, but i don't think you have to have read the books to get the jokes. in fact, some of the ones i found funniest were about books/authors i hadn't read, while some that were focused on books i have read were completely opaque to me. quick, someone explain this one to me:



i don't get it. i understand the seven large cups correspond to the seven volumes of ISOLT, but "without hesitation?" if drinking = writing, it should have taken him fifteen years to drink those coffees. and the book itself is FULL of hesitation - both in marcel's actions and in the meandering, backtracking way it's written. and readers are hesitating, too - most people don't dive into that puppy, reading all seven volumes in a row. (okay, some people do - i did, but i was embarking upon the summer of proust, and rules are rules). so i'm missing the joke. and i have no idea what the weird noise is referencing. were there a lot of weird noises in ISOLT? summer of proust was seven years ago, so i guess i'm hazy on the details, but i don't remember weird noises being such a huge part of the book that it would warrant a reference in tumblr-humor.

and this one makes cormac mccarthy sound more emo than stoic, so i disapprove



this one is also baffling:



i've read veronica roth, and i don't know that she's more quirky (or delicious) than any other author. i understand her relation to chicago, but not her reputation for leaving before her drink is made, or whatever would be analogous to that.

which leads me to another problem - some of these jokes are about authors themselves, some are about their characters, and some feature the authors surrounded by a number of their characters or manifestations of their themes and the lines get blurry.



now, as the creator of the book, and the situation, i suppose she's able to get away with blending with her character, but sometimes it takes a minute to access that mental file of "what i know about this author's life" and "what i know about some book they wrote" in order to get at what's being poked.

there's a heavy focus on poetry, and i gotta hand it to them - some of the poetry ones were really ambitious. i don't know too much about poetry, but i knew all the poems they rewrote, and some of them were multiple-page loooong. there's also an abundance of tolkien. and nick carraway. and eugene o'neill. and yet not one mention (in the book OR on the site itself) of either byron or thomas hardy!!

which is probably for the best - i would have been very critical.

one of them did make me laugh aloud:



oh, and i guess i chuckled at this one, too



and this one was worth the wait to get to that last line



some of them were well-adapted to the gimmick











others were funny without necessarily fitting the gimmick well







and i always do love a good george r.r. martin joke






but then i had more confusion with some of the literary meet-ups:



i understand the connection between yeats and achebe, but is there a connection between a.a. milne and the others i'm missing? i wasn't introduced to pooh during my formative years because my mom couldn't stand him, and i didn't know until reading this that a.a. milne was a dude, so i learned something here, thanks!

as for the examples i didn't recognize at all, there were four.* i googled the names, and not surprisingly, it's my typical readerly blind spot: the russians! (Dead Souls, Anna Karenina)

but also a german! (The Magic Mountain)

the last one was steve roggenbuck. and now that i've googled him, i wish to be still living in ignorance. i do not understand this generation. my lawn, leave it please!

that's not to say i've read all the other books - i'm not a machine. but i know enough about them by reputation, RA training, collective unconscious, or (don't scold me!) movie versions to have understood the jokes, so don't give me any smug bullshit, rejected subtitles on the back cover, that "if you don't get the jokes, you should probably read more." my lawn, leave it please!

i appreciate the way they tried to joggle a bunch of unconnected tumblr posts into a book form by providing callbacks and recurring characters and (almost) framing it with two rip van winkle jokes - most internetty books don't attempt narrative structure. i just wish i'd found this funnier overall.

i leave you with this. you know what to do.





* there were also two i didn't clock right away because i'd forgotten characters' last names, but once i googled them, i was all ohhhh riiiiight, that!

[alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

i read this in the barnes and noble starbucks. i did not order anything. i also did not buy the book. i feel sort of bad about that.

[Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're a bibliophile, can't imagine life without Starbucks, and/or are a hipster, then this is the book for you. The entries are very clever. Many of them made me laugh out loud.

This unbiased review is based upon a copy of the book won through the Goodreads First Reads giveaway program.

[Hayden · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has been on my to-read list since it came out in 2016....and maybe I should have read it back then. See, I was an old fan of the tumblr it came from during that time, but now I'm wondering if that humor just didn't age well, as I didn't find these nearly as clever as I remember. That's not to say there aren't a few genuinely funny ones in here, but most of them seemed to be trying too hard, and others I just didn't "get," even when I was familiar with the authors or characters represented.

And yes, there is a mix of authors and characters in here, and sometimes the divide gets blurry and doesn't quite work (the same as when some of the different authors interact).

Ultimately, this was a quick read, but unfortunately a bit of a disappointing one. I only paid like $4 for this almost-new copy from thriftbooks, though, so I don't feel like I wasted too much money on it.

[Rosie · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I don't really know a lot about Starbucks, but I do know a lot about books, so I got most of the humor of this book. This book imagines authors and characters of books going into Starbucks and ordering their drink of choice. Along with each order is some reference to the author's life or the plot involving the characters. Some made me laugh, such as the ones about the March sisters and Tom Sawyer, but there were a few I didn't get. If you enjoy literary humor with a side of Starbucks, this is another one for you to try.

[Kaethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been a Starbucks-in-a-Barnes and Noble barista, and I remember the authors mural well. Huh, I don't know if they still use it. This book is a better tribute to both the coffee shops and to the authors than any I could imagine. The Tumblr was amusing, so I was predisposed to like this. But these clever people made it better: they gave it a story arc, and lots of interaction, and there are illustrations by Harry Bliss. It is still fundamentally a book of English major humor, but I've loved that sort of thing my whole life. This will go next to my copy of Texts From Jane Eyre, and I'll probably read it at least once every year from now on.

Giveaway from GoodReads

[Margaret Carpenter]

Hilarious and brilliant. I should read more.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wasn't really that funny. At first I assumed I just wasn't getting the jokes because I wasn't familiar with every literary reference made in the book. But even with the authors and characters I'm very familiar with, I either did not get the joke, or I got it but it wasn't funny at all (John Green's was ridiculous). The only ones I liked were George R.R. Martin's and Lemony Snicket's. Every other reference was just trying way too hard. :/

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend sent this to me and it was good for a giggle. I used to teach 8th grade and the humor was a bit like smart, literary-minded 8th graders. Clever but silly. I don't know much about Starbucks drinks so part of that humor escaped me but I DID get MOST of the literary references.

[Selah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few good laughs, a lot of references I didn’t get, and some real duds. Even my 13 year old groaned over the Suzanne Collins one—it was basically a dad joke. 2.5 stars

[Maddly Peculiar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely hilarious bookish humor. A classic that will age like a fine wine.

[mer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve been reading this book on and off for a while. Some stories I enjoyed and some I didn’t.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cute, fun little book about authors and literary characters and their imagined interactions with baristas in a Starbucks. Many of the references went over my head, but I enjoyed the ones I understood.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I walked into my local Starbucks carrying an advanced uncorrected proof copy of Literary Starbucks that I just won from Goodreads. I ordered a Venti Pike coffee (no room for cream) since I intended to read the whole book in one sitting in the store but realized, being an out of work writer, that I only had enough money for a Tall. The barista smiled when I explained my dilemma and let me have the Venti for the price of the Tall. She explained that she was a true patron of the arts.

As I started reading, I noticed Jill, Wilson and Nora sitting at a table across from me. Harry was with them sketching something on his cup. They all smiled in anticipation as I opened up the book and began to read. Several hours later, frustrated at my slow reading speed, they all got up and left mumbling that they would have preferred someone with a bit more intelligence to review their book.

Later that evening, as the store closed, I finished the last page and rated the book 4 stars. I wished the authors were still there so that I could tell them I loved the book and get them to autograph it, but by that time they had all retreated to their computers to start work on their next book, Literary Dunkin' Donuts An Oxymoron?

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book made me laugh or at least smirk throughout as famous authors and literary characters place orders at a single Starbucks store that would be entertaining to be a customer at, but you wouldn't want to be a barista there. ;-) The better you know the author/character ordering, the more humorous the example. My favorites included The Bronte Sisters and Jane Eyre, The Marches (Amy just takes Jo's drink), The Bennets and Mr. Darcy, Neil Gaiman, Harper Lee, and Benedick & Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing (they deny ordering for each other until the barista shows them the orders written in their own handwriting..). Having recently read "Texts from Jane Eyre"--a book in the same vein that features texts from various literary characters, I probably laughed more at it, but this was still good fun and worth a read if you are a book nerd and/or Starbucks fan.

[MKF · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have passed over this book many times in the last few months because it was about Starbucks. Now that I read it I regret it and know next time to follow my gut. Maybe it would of been better if it was just authors and not fictional characters. Though that being said I doubt half of those authors would ever be found at a starbucks if it existed the way it does now. I guess there were suppose to be jokes for each person but I did not find anything humorous. Reading this made me realize that I am not as literate as I once believed because many of these names are unknown to me. It could just be that they are mainly just popular, trendy authors which fit the Starbucks theme. Those are the books I usually do not read so I may never read them.

[Scout]

Alainon walks up the counter and orders Folgers instacoffee. The barista hesitates but then follows through with the order. Alainon glances earnestly across the menu. She is sure she would enjoy this Starbucks more if she expanded her taste. Past experience tells her that everything she has tried at this Starbucks she has enjoyed. Only time will tell if the rest of the menu holds up.

[˚₊‧☾ space case ✩‧₊˚ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't get all of the jokes (which means I need to read more--and that is definitely true), so I'm going to have to revisit this one day in the future. The ones I did get, though, were hilarious and I enjoyed them a lot.

[Lekeisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really something to read, but you get a few laughs. If I didn't love coffee and know most of the characters, this wouldn't have been funny to me at all. Full RTC

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought it would be funnier?

Too many goddamn frappuccinos.

[Amanda (TheBookwormAdventures) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious. I read it in about 45 minutes and sent tons of pictures of the sections to my sisters, giggling to myself.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've got to admit that this was pretty clever and entertaining.
Bit of a guilty pleasure, though, because: Starbucks ... Meh.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was cute and funny at times, but I'm definitely not well-read enough to have understood most of the jokes unfortunately.

Basically, this is a collection of humourous Starbucks orders made by famous authors and characters, which is a cool idea.

There were a few good ones in here, but I only got a fraction of them and not all of them were funny. It's not the book's fault necessarily for targeting such a niche audience of readers (probably mostly English majors). However, I would have loved to see the inclusion of footnotes or endnotes providing explanations for the jokes (context of author's life, name and summary of text referenced, why this specific order was made). I would have been able to appreciate more of the content this way, even if I hadn't known the author or text, and I might have added new works to my to be read pile.

A couple things I didn't like: the repetition of certain authors throughout the book, taking space away from other potential authors, and the scenes involving multiple characters or authors, specifically when I didn't know them. I ended skipping some entries when I didn't recognize the name unfortunately. I'm also really disappointed that many of the entries from the original Tumblr didn't make the cut, because I looked at that blog first and read a lot of amusing entries that made me want to buy the book.

I did end up chuckling a few times, but maybe not enough to make this collection worth it. Here are some of my favourites:

"William Wordsworth orders a smoothie. It reminds him of a lake he visited once as a child. Then again, so do most things."

"John Milton orders a Venti Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino blended coffee. 'It smells like Paradise,' he breathes as he picks it up off the counter. He drops it immediately."

"Mary Shelley goes up to the counter with her eccentric friend, who is wearing a lab coat. He wants to make his own drink out of the elements of other drinks: an espresso with hot chocolate, iced tea, whipped cream, caramel, pumpkin spice, mocha, and peppermint. 'That's too many seasons at once!' the barista cries. There is a flash of lightning. The espresso machine begins to move. The back room of the Starbucks is full of pitchforks."

"Charlotte Bronte goes up to the counter for a cup of tea and, Reader, she orders it!"

"Jane Eyre orders a Venti Earl Grey tea. It is raining outside. The barista is ugly and cold to her, but she falls in love with him anyway. There is a banging from the backroom of the Starbucks, but the barista seems unconcerned. 'It won't affect me bringing you your coffee,' he assures Jane. He is wrong about this."

"William Goldman goes up to the counter and orders a large chocolate Chai. 'As you wish,' says the barista."

"George R. R. Martin takes over behind the counter as the barista cleans up. For his first customer, he prepares an intricate and tantalizing drink. Martin calls the customer up to the counter, then lets them watch as he slowly pours their drink onto the floor."

"Lady Macbeth goes up to the counter and sees three female baristas intently hovering over the espresso machine, chanting something unintelligible. She decides to order a Passion tea and proceeds to spill it all over her clothes and hands. She runs screaming to the bathroom. The three baristas cackle in uncanny unison."

"J.K. Rowling goes up to the counter and orders seven pumpkin spice lattes. The barista gives her eight."

"Lemony Snicket goes up to the counter and orders a caffè Americano. It is bitter. The barista is armed. The man in the corner has poisoned someone's drink. The espresso machine is on fire. Lemony Snicket begins to run down the street as the Starbucks explodes. He is being chased. He spills his coffee."

And also, sadly, this entry perhaps sums it up best:

"You go up to the counter. You need a glossy hardcover, one that you think will look good on your coffee table, one that you think will earn you a few chuckles from houseguests. Starbucks has just the thing! You take the book to a corner table, content - buying things always appeases ennui - and you begin to flip through your new book. You begin to think you overpaid."

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This quirky collection of literary vignettes centered around the ubiquitous coffee shop caught my eye. When I realized how much whitespace there was I knew that I could read it in one sitting. At the end I was forced to conclude that, like Ulysses (which I have not read and do not have on my current TBR), the events in this book take place in a single day. One that defies the norms of temporal mechanics. And encompasses so much of the literary landscape that it will astonish you. I enjoyed running into some favorites in the coffee shop, like Elizabeth Bishop. Also Agatha Christie who of course got on well with Nancy Drew. And William Goldman whose cup had 'S. Morgenstern' written on it. Virgil and Homer had a bit of a tussle. I felt bad that the March girls (Jo, et. al.) left before the Bennett girls (Elizabeth and co.) arrived because they have quite a bit in common. Sadly I think those two gents at the corner table are still waiting for their pal Godot to turn up.

If you are a lover of books you will find some of your favorite characters and/or authors here. The individual servings are finely crafted and clever and actually create a fun and strangely almost coherent narrative.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh what fun! The authors have imagined what famous authors and their best-known characters would order at the famous coffee establishment and how they would behave. Maybe one shouldn’t gulp the whole book down before the coffee even has time to cool, but I couldn’t help myself. “John Keats orders a Venti iced caramel Frappuccino. He sits down at a table by himself, sighs dramatically, and doesn’t drink it.” “Tennessee Williams goes up to the counter and orders a coffee, but he doesn’t pay for it himself. He always depends on the kindness of strangers.” The March sisters from Little Women order as one would expect: Meg orders a Frappucino, Beth shares cups of coffee with everyone who walks in, Jo orders a “complicated and stylish” drink which Amy takes, and Marmee buys herself a small cup of ordinary coffee. Me, I always order tea and sit in a corner with my computer. If you don’t know literature, you won’t get the jokes, but this book is a delight.

[Jill Jemmett · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I heard about this book, I had to get it. I love Starbucks and I love books, so this is the best of both worlds.

In this book, many beloved authors and literary characters go into Starbucks and order coffee. Each order matches either their life, story, or writing style. These were so clever and accurate! Here are some of my favourites:

“Mary Ann Evans goes up to the counter and gives her name as George Eliot.”
“Jack London goes up to the counter with twelve sled dogs in tow.”
“Atticus Finch goes up to the counter and orders the one drink on the menu that no one else was brave enough to get.”
One negative thing about this book was that there were a lot of authors or characters that I had never heard of, or I didn’t know enough about them to understand the jokes. But the ones that I did understand made me laugh out loud.

This is a great book for book lovers!

[Erikka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoy books like this, where literary characters and authors are given new life in fictional circumstances. I wish that there was some attribution, maybe at the end, to explain the authors/characters I didn't know. We were googling a good number of people. The original Tumblr page has helpful footnotes in hashtag form. This was pretty damn funny, though, and I really wish that this Starbucks really existed. What an amazing collection of people, alive, dead, or fictional.

[LillyBooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a mostly silly collection of what ifs. What if an author or even a fictional character went to Starbucks? What would they order? I found them mostly clever, although there were a few people mentioned that I've never heard of (must read more!). The chuckles and the shallow fun would be three stars. But then, right there in the middle, is a poem about the Starbucks mermaid that took my breath away with its depth. That poem was worth a star all on its own.

[Dorothy · Rating 2 out of 5]

You really need a solid thorough background in literature to understand all the subtle references in this book. Try to imagine remembering who Adrienne Rich is and then connecting her writing or life with a wildly out of time, humorous twisted paragraph that incorporates a Starbucks drink. Confused? So was I. My favorite is Ripe Van Winkle walking into a Starbucks and thinking he was in a Dunkin Donuts. In his view that only that had changed was the sign and perhaps the donuts.

[Kit Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute vignettes of various authors and characters in their local (probably cursed) Starbucks. Helpful to have a fairly broad breadth of reading experience (classics--both older and modern, fantasy, mysteries, short stories, et al.) but not essential. Accompanied occasionally by cartoons. It reads pretty fast, so it's a fun way to spend an hour or so.