The Importance of Reading Ernest discussion

Did anyone else mix themselves a drink from "The Short Happy Life..." or feel otherwise inspired to imbibe?

Booze has to be one of Hemingway's favourite set pieces, and I know I have an awfully hard time reading him without craving the drinks his characters are drinking.

i have been growing mint in a pot, so i can make mojtios. gonna make some this week! ha! i have all the ingredients,and was given a muddler for a gift.

I'm surprised anyone was sober enough to shoot anything.

you know hemingway loved mojitos, and homemade daquari's, not the fruit ones, or frozen. it's heavy booze.

my mojitos turned out great. actually made them twice. ready to do it again!

he drank that at the famous bar he frequented in havana, cuba, which has a barstool as a shrine in his honor,and nobody can sit on it! including the actor michael palin who is a huge fan of hemingway's!

La Floridita. Hemingway immortalized it in Islands in the Stream by having Thomas Hudson set a personal record for daquiris (sans sugar) at a bar in Bimini after he learns of the death of his son in the war. He almost always drank daquiris at La Floridita, but the bar itself in that scene was modeled after Sloppy Joe's.

I read Islands in the Stream and liked it a lot. There is a scene where his son is fighting a fish for hours and hours, and I will never forget it. Only novel of his I can honestly say I enjoyed.

oh stephen, you must read A FAREWELL TO ARMS,and also THE SUN ALSO RISES. they are such better novels then ISLANDS,and also OLD MAN & THE SEA!

I held back from reading Islands in the Stream until I became a father and I am glad I waited. I think I appreciated it much more for understanding what it is to love my kids. I also prize it as one of Hemingway's best. I think its posthumous status reduces the appreciation for many.

On a personal note to Stephen: I just want to add that I think you are a great addition to the group. So many of us here are inveterate Hemingway fans, it is nice to have voices of moderation.

I first met Hemingway through the Nick Adams stories, and that made me love him. Then I read a novel, and that made me think "what a whiner;" however, that might have been when I read it. Then I read Death in the Afternoon and I thought, suppressed homosexual desire, and a not so suppressed desire to die.

I find my own feelings for Hemingway far more complex than my feelings for any other author. Islands in the Stream really touched me.

Thank you Brad.

I realize this is an old post, but I like to check out To Have and Have Another while reading Hemingway.