In which we have a (mostly reasonable) discussion about Amazon and Goodreads, buying bananas in the winter, the best way to track a TBR list, talking about books on the internet, and more.

Enjoy, subscribe, and let us know what you’d like to see in future episodes.

Show notes (including all books discussed) and an embedded player are below. You can also download the show as an mp3 file.

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Bookrageous Episode 54; Our Digital Reading Lives

Intro Music; Tumble and Fall by Elijah Ocean

What We’re Reading

Rebecca

[1:30] Fingersmith, Sarah Waters

[3:15] The Last Girlfriend on Earth, Simon Rich

[5:05] The Siren, Tiffany Reisz

Josh

[7:35] Bookrageous Episode 46: Comfort Food Books

[8:10] Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon, Matt Fraction, David Aja, Javier Pulido

[9:30] Fury Max: My War Gone By, Garth Ennis, Goran Parlov

[10:40] The Citizen’s Constitution: An Annotated Guide, Seth Lipsky

[11:20] Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America’s Most Celebrated Publishing House,

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Boris Kachka

[12:50] Saga, Vol. 1, Brian K Vaughan, Fiona Staples

Jenn

[14:20] The Dark is Rising: The Complete Sequence, Susan Cooper

[16:40] How to Be a Good Wife, Emma Chapman (Turn of Mind)

[18:15] The Ice-Shirt, William T. Vollmann

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Intermission; Rumble and Sway by Jamie N Commons

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Managing Our Digital Reading Lives

[21:00] Goodreads and Amazon

[23:25] LibraryThing

[35:05] Alternatives to Amazon: Powells.com; Better World Books

[46:30] Why Have Kids?, Jessica Valenti

[47:45] Traps, Mackenzie Bezos

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Outro Music; Tumble and Fall by Elijah Ocean

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Find Us!

Bookrageous on Tumblr, Podbean, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, and leave us voicemail at 347-855-7323

Find Us Online: Josh, Jenn, Rebecca

Preorder Josh’s book! Maine Beer: Brewing in Vacationland

Come to our party! May 29, 7 p.m., at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe

Bookrageous Book Club Pick: She, by H. Rider Haggard (available at used bookstores and from Project Gutenberg)

Get Bookrageous schwag at CafePress

Note: Our show book links direct you to WORD, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn. If you click through and buy the book, we will get a small affiliate payment. We won’t be making any money off any book sales — any payments go into hosting fees for the Bookrageous podcast, or other Bookrageous projects. We promise.

Shipyard worker in for a "beer" after work. A bar just outside the Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine. 1944.

You may have noticed that it’s been a bit a little while some time about four months since the last update to Brews and Books. Sorry about that. Here’s what happened.

Back at the start of the year, I announced that I was working on a book about Maine beer and brewing, to be published in 2013 by The History Press. I also promised that I’d endeavor to stick with the steady updates to BrewsAndBooks.com that I’d been making for years. While I’m happy to report that the first part has gone swimmingly, I haven’t stuck to that second bit.

I wish I had a better excuse than “dude, I’ve been super busy,” but there it is. Between full-time bookselling, the book, and various other projects, I’ve let this site slip to the side. After years of regular updates to Brews and Books - often multiple 1,000+ word posts a week - I’ve committed the cardinal blogging sin of blogfading.

That said, I’m nearing the end of the tunnel now. My manuscript will be in the hands of my wonderful editors next month, and I’ve come out on the other side of a busy holiday season of bookselling. It will take some time to get back up to speed, but I’ll be getting back to writing about beer, books and comics here at BrewsAndBooks.com. Expect all the unbridled enthusiasm and hyperbole you’ve come to expect from me over the years.

In the meantime, I do have a bit of writing to share. Despite my neglect of this blog, I’ve had plenty of other non-book writing to keep me busy. This spring I wrote a feature (my first cover feature!) for The Portland Phoenix about the Maine Comics Arts Festival. I also contributed to a book called Read This! (my first published non-periodical work!), which came out this fall. I’ve kept up with my regular writing on iFanboy and for the Maine Sunday Telegram, and I’ve continued to co-host and co-produce the Bookrageous podcast with my pals Jenn and Rebecca.

Below, you’ll find links to the book, the feature, some of my favorite articles and columns of 2012, and the last few Bookrageous podcasts. It doesn’t make up for the  lack of updates over the last few months, but hopefully the 10,000+ words and hours of audio provide at least a bit of entertainment.

Getting Ready for the Maine Comics Arts Festival

On Public Radio, talking about the best books of 2012

iFanboy

iFanboy’s Best of 2012: The Best Non-Fiction Comics

Comic Book Moonlighting

Comic Shots: The Rime of the Modern Mariner and Pilgrim’s Dole

Comic Shots: The Stereotypical Freaks and Brewdog’s Punk IPA

Comic Shots: One Dead Spy and a Stone Fence

Arcade Brewery Kickstarts Comics and Craft Beer

The Maine Sunday Telegram

Skiing in Maine: Just resolve to hit the slopes soon

Skiing in Maine: Stuff those stockings with skis, accessories

Skiing in Maine: Early season skiing brings the passionate back to the slopes

Worth the Trip: Rangeley’s range of outdoor activities makes it a favorite

Shawnee yurt provides right amount of comfort

‘Up’ chronicles hiking adventures of mother, daughter

Bookrageous

Bookrageous 47; 2012 Favorites

Bookrageous 46; Comfort Food Books

Bookrageous 45; Telegraph Avenue

Bookrageous 44; 2-Year Anniversary Special

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How does a book make the journey from author’s mind to your shelf? Bookrageous is going to find out.

In the first of a number of episodes talking with folks in the publishing industry, we spoke with Knopf Doubleday’s Steve Shodin and Picador’s Gabrielle Gantz. Steve and Gabrielle work in production and publicity, and we chatted a bit about their roles in a book’s life.

Enjoy, subscribe, and let us know what you’d like to see in future episodes.

Show notes (including all books discussed) and an embedded player are below. You can also download the show as an mp3 file.

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Bookrageous Episode 43; How a Book is Made

Intro Music; BELLS≥ — Behold

What We’re Reading

Jenn

[1:15] Every Day, David Levithan

[2:45] The Apothecary, Maile Meloy

[3:35] Safe as Houses, Marie-Helene Bertino, October 1 2012 (Recommended Reading)

Josh

[4:15] Mortality, Christopher Hitchens

[5:30] Penguin Civic Classics series

Rebecca

[7:45] I Married You For Happiness, Lily Tuck

[9:00] Dare Me, Megan Abbott

[10:35] Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey

[11:10] This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz

[11:45] More Baths Less Talking, Nick Hornby

[12:15] Why Have Kids, Jessica Valenti

Gabrielle

[12:45] More Baths Less Talking, Nick Hornby

[13:10] Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie (The Child Thief, Brom)

[14:00] He Died With His Eyes Open, Derek Raymond

[15:15] A Breath of Life, Clarice Lispector

Steve

[16:20] Drift, Rachel Maddow

[17:40] Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson

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Intermission; BELLS≥ — On the Arc

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How a Book is Made

[36:45] Steve has worked on: Glen Duncan; Chuck Palahniuk; The Night Circus

[39:45] Gabrielle has worked on: Jonathan Franzen; Jeffrey Eugenides; Siri Hustvedt’s Living, Thinking, Looking; BIG IDEAS//small books; Garret Keizer’s Privacy; The Paris Review’s Object Lessons (October 2 2012); Alain de Botton’s How to Think More About Sex (December 24 2012); Philippa Perry’s How to Stay Sane (December 24 2012)

[48:00] Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner

[48:20] Office Girl, Joe Meno

[49:15] First Second Books

[50:55] Angry Robot

[51:15] When She Woke, Hillary Jordan

[57:15] Publishing job listings: Mediabistro/Galleycat; Publishers Lunch; Publishers Weekly

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Outro; BELLS≥ — Behold

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Find Us!

Bookrageous on Tumblr, Podbean, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, and leave us voicemail at 347-855-7323

Find Us Online: Josh, Jenn, Rebecca, Gabrielle, Steve

Bookrageous Book Club Pick: Telegraph Avenue (out September 11 2012), Michael Chabon, 10% off from WORD in NY and Pages & Pages in Australia for listeners! Just write BOOKRAGEOUS in the comments field.

Get Bookrageous schwag at CafePress

Note: Our show book links direct you to WORD, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn. If you click through and buy the book, we will get a small affiliate payment. We won’t be making any money off any book sales — any payments go into hosting fees for the Bookrageous podcast, or Bookrageous projects like our calendar. We promise.

Here’s eight of my favorite releases for this month, with authors ranging from Pulitzer winners to little ol’ me.

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Read This! edited by Hans Weyandt

Release Date: September 1st
Read it yet? Yes
Why I’m excited: Before I get accused of sock puppeteering or boosterism or anything like that - yes, I contributed to Read This! Handpicked Favorites from America’s Indie Bookstores. And yes, I think it’s awesome.

Sure, there’s a conflict of interest there. Dear reader, I think you’re smart enough to make up your own mind about the book.

Last year, Hans Weyandt began asking booksellers around the country for lists of their favorite books to handsell. The project started online at Mr. Micawber Enters The Internets, and eventually grew into Read This! Along with the checklists of bookseller faves, the book includes interviews with each bookseller, longer pitches for some of the books, boatloads of bookstore trivia, and an introduction from author (and indie bookseller, natch) Ann Patchett. If you’re looking for a reading list dictated by bookish enthusiasm instead of the bestseller lists, buy this book.

This book offers lists of favorites that have flown under the radar, but off of bookstore shelves. First published on Hans Weyandt’s blog for Micawber’s Books, each list includes a bookseller’s top fifty books, anecdotes, and interviews about the life of being a bookseller, reader, and engaged citizen. All proceeds will go to American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE).

Contributing bookstores include Book Passage, Tattered Cover Book Store, Three Lives & Company, Boswell Books, City Lights Bookstore, BookCourt, Harvard Book Store, Carmichael’s Bookstore, Prairie Lights, The King’s English Bookshop, Square Books, Magers & Quinn, Micawber’s Books, Unabridged Bookstore, Regulator Bookshop, Subterranean Books, Faulkner House Books, Skylight Books, Maria’s Bookshop, Inkwood Books, Rakestraw Books, RiverRun Bookstore, Sherman’s Books and Stationary, Iowa Book, and Fireside Books.

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Economix by Michael Goodwin and Dan Burr

Release Date: September 1st
Read it yet? Yes
Why I’m excited: The graphic format is often associated with kids, but it’s a fantastic way to communicate complex ideas to people of all ages. Economix puts the often-confounding world of economics (both as a whole and the current state of the US economy) into an easy-to-understand book. It’s fun, it’s clever, and it’s a better primer on the dismal science than most of the ECON one-oh-whatever books in our history, business, and current affairs departments.

If you’d like to see for yourself, Goodwin and Burr have posted a few sample pages on their website.

Stimulus plans: good or bad? Free markets: How free are they? Jobs: Can we afford them? Occupy Wall Street . . . worldwide!

Everybody’s talking about the economy, but how can we, the people, understand what Wall Street or Washington knows—or say they know? Read Economix.

With clear, witty writing and quirky, accessible art, this important and timely graphic novel transforms “the dismal science” of economics into a fun, fact-filled story about human nature and our attempts to make the most of what we’ve got . . . and sometimes what our neighbors have got. Economix explains it all, from the beginning of Western economic thought, to markets free and otherwise, to economic failures, successes, limitations, and future possibilities. It’s the essential, accessible guide to understanding the economy and economic practices. A must-read for every citizen and every voter.

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Comics Sketchbooks: The Private Worlds of Today’s Most Creative Talents by Steven Heller

Release Date: September 7th
Read it yet? No
Why I’m excited: No matter the medium - movies, comics, prose, music, whatever - I’m a huge process nerd. I love to see how the art I consume became art, y’know? In Comics Sketchbooks, Heller collects work from over 80 artists and cartoonists with experience all over the industry. Contributors include political cartoonists, artists at Marvel and DC, underground comix creators and even the people behind the Sunday funnies.

The book is organized by artist, with each getting a short bio and then a smattering of sketchbook pages with creator commentary. There’s loads of great art in what’s sure to be an inspiring collection.

From cartoons to graphic novels, from humor to superheroes, comics are the world’s most popular form of illustration. And, as in all forms of illustration, artists and designers experiment with visual ideas, image-and-word play, narrative sequencing, and stylistic flourishes through sketching. What we rarely see is the creative thinking–the doodling–that leads to fully formed visual ideas and stories. Comics Sketchbooks presents the private notebooks of eighty-two of the world’s most inventive, innovative, and successful artists alongside new talents and emerging illustrators. The artists have been selected by the world’s leading critic and most knowledgeable source in the field of graphic design and illustration, Steven Heller, who has had personal access to some of the most private and unseen material. Although there have been several comic-book compilations over the years, none has the visual excitement, insight, and mind-blowing creativity– and fun–of this one.

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This is a Cookbook by Max and Eli Sussman

Release Date: September 10th
Read it yet? Yes
Why I’m excited: I’m not terribly well equipped to write about a cookbook. I’m a left-brained guy, and it makes trying to review a cookbook feel like trying to review an instruction manual. A pretty instruction manual, but a manual nonetheless.

What I can tell you is that after only a week, the Sussman’s This is a Cookbook has become a staple in our home. The recipes are easy to understand, they can be cooked in a small kitchen, and the ingredients are mostly staples or easy to find at our local supermarket. As a Weldon Owen cookbook, it’s also characteristically gorgeous. Last night we had friends over for dinner, and we ended up passing around the cookbook like a dirty magazine.

I’ve already made a half-dozen things from the cookbook, and they’re all recipes I’ll be making again. That means it already has a better success rate than a lot of cookbooks I’ve tried.

Weldon Owen has a sampler of some of the recipes in the book. I can’t vouch for all of them (yet), but the Pulled Pork and the Chocolate-Peanut Butter Pie are definitely winners.

Get into the kitchen. Use what’s in there. And don’t be worried about f’ing it up. James Beard Foundation 2012 Rising Star nominee Max Sussman and his partner in crime, Eli, are over perfection. They care about cooking good food that tastes like you made it. Teaming up with Olive Press, these Brooklyn brothers of Über-hip New York establishments Roberta’s and Mile End have a go-to, hands-dirty method for wannabe-kitchen-badasses.

This is a Cookbook for Real Life features more than 60 killer recipes that demystify the cooking process for at-home chefs, especially young people just starting out. Combining years of elbow grease in the fiery bowels of restaurants, the Sussmans bring readers a plethora of tricks to make life in the kitchen easier and frankly, more fun. This new cookbook also re-creates some of their favorite comfort foods while growing up, as well as some recipes with their origins in brotherly b.s. that wound up tasting delicious.

The Sussmans have got the back of twenty-somethings, who may be too freaked to pick up a cast-iron skillet and instead opt for cop-out take-out as a culinary standby. This is a Cookbook for Real Life is designed to be a go-to kitchen companion with meals fit for one, two, or many, and features plans of attack for dinner shindigs. The best part? All of the book’s recipes have easy-to-find ingredients that limit the prep time fuss and can be prepared in small (read: shoebox) kitchens.

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This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

Release Date: September 11th
Read it yet? Yes
Why I’m excited: Talking with folks about Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, it seems that it’s a book people either love or hate. I fall in the former camp - it’s one of my favorite books, a tour de force of storytelling and authorial voice. In this collection of interconnected short stories, Díaz retains the propulsive force of his storytelling. The book moves along at a blistering pace, as though the main character (Yunior) can’t tell you his story fast enough. Like the best romantic stories, This is How You Lose Her is funny and sad, tender and gruff, reckless and contemplative.

It’s a love story about love.

Just like Egan’s miraculous Visit from the Goon Squad, Diaz’s collection manages to tell a story that will appeal to people looking for satisfying short stories and a cohesive longer narrative.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Díaz’s first book, Drown, established him as a major new writer with “the dispassionate eye of a journalist and the tongue of a poet” (Newsweek). His first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was named #1 Fiction Book of the Year” by Time magazine and spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, establishing itself – with more than a million copies in print – as a modern classic. In addition to the Pulitzer, Díaz has won a host of major awards and prizes, including the National Book Critic’s Circle Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/O. Henry Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Anisfield-Wolf Award. Now Díaz turns his remarkable talent to the haunting, impossible power of love – obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love. On a beach in the Dominican Republic, a doomed relationship flounders. In the heat of a hospital laundry room in New Jersey, a woman does her lover’s washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a man buys his love child, his only son, a first baseball bat and glove. At the heart of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young hardhead whose longing for love is equaled only by his recklessness–and by the extraordinary women he loves and loses: artistic Alma; the aging Miss Lora; Magdalena, who thinks all Dominican men are cheaters; and the love of his life, whose heartbreak ultimately becomes his own. In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, the stories in This Is How You Lose Her lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that “the half-life of love is forever.”

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Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon

Release Date: September 11th
Read it yet? Yes
Why I’m excited: There was no way this book wasn’t going to be on this list. Michael Chabon is probably my favorite novelist, so I “Can’t Wait” for anything he writes. His new novel, which follows record store owners and bandmates Archy and Nat, digs into some of the same themes as perennial favorite Kavalier and Clay. There’s a heavy strain of pop culture nostalgia (though comics are traded for music, and the 40s for the early aughts), and the central relationship isn’t about romance, but male friendship. There’s also a strong strain of the indie stalwart versus the big bad chain, which is a welcome narrative for an indie bookseller.

It’s a lot more grounded novel than some of his recent fare; it lacks any magical golems or alternate Alaskan histories. Instead of magic in the story, Chabon relies on the magic of his language. His writing is lyrical and often virtuosic, which is appropriate given the subject matter. Chabon also has a chance to show his sense of humor - I’d say Telegraph Avenue is the funniest book in his oeuvre.

Despite some early critical pans for this book, I think it’s Chabon at the top of his game.

As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are still hanging in there–longtime friends, bandmates, and co-regents of Brokeland Records, a kingdom of used vinyl located in the borderlands of Berkeley and Oakland. Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, two semi-legendary midwives who have welcomed more than a thousand newly minted citizens into the dented utopia at whose heart–half tavern, half temple–stands Brokeland.

When ex-NFL quarterback Gibson Goode, the fifth-richest black man in America, announces plans to build his latest Dogpile megastore on a nearby stretch of Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear it means certain doom for their vulnerable little enterprise. Meanwhile, Aviva and Gwen also find themselves caught up in a battle for their professional existence, one that tests the limits of their friendship. Adding another layer of complication to the couples’ already tangled lives is the surprise appearance of Titus Joyner, the teenage son Archy has never acknowledged and the love of fifteen-year-old Julius Jaffe’s life.

An intimate epic, a NorCal “Middlemarch” set to the funky beat of classic vinyl soul-jazz and pulsing with a virtuosic, pyrotechnical style all its own, “Telegraph Avenue” is the great American novel we’ve been waiting for. Generous, imaginative, funny, moving, thrilling, humane, triumphant, it is Michael Chabon’s most dazzling book yet.

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The Oath by Jeffrey Toobin

Release Date: September 18th
Read it yet? No
Why I’m excited: Toobin’s The Nine was an excellent lo0k inside the world of the United States Supreme Court, and I’ve been looking forward to the follow-up for years. The Oath, which covers President Obama’s first four years with the court, isn’t likely to disappoint. It’s a relationship often characterized by the media as liberal Obama butting heads with a conservative court, but the author takes a slightly more contrarian approach. Framing the book with Obama as the Constitutional conservative and Roberts as the radical is an interesting choice, and I don’t doubt that Toobin can pull off.

There is a question as to how current the book will feel - the jacket mentions that the conflict “will crescendo” with a few cases that have already been decided - but it should make for a good historical document either way.

From the moment John Roberts, the chief justice of the United States, blundered through the Oath of Office at Barack Obama’s inauguration, the relationship between the Supreme Court and the White House has been confrontational. Both men are young, brilliant, charismatic, charming, determined to change the course of the nation—and completely at odds on almost every major constitutional issue. One is radical; one essentially conservative. The surprise is that Obama is the conservative—a believer in incremental change, compromise, and pragmatism over ideology. Roberts—and his allies on the Court—seek to overturn decades of precedent: in short, to undo the ultimate victory FDR achieved in the New Deal.

This ideological war will crescendo during the 2011-2012 term, in which several landmark cases are on the Court’s docket—most crucially, a challenge to Obama’s controversial health-care legislation. With four new justices joining the Court in just five years, including Obama’s appointees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, this is a dramatically—and historically—different Supreme Court, playing for the highest of stakes.

No one is better positioned to chronicle this dramatic tale than Jeffrey Toobin, whose prize-winning bestseller The Nine laid bare the inner workings and conflicts of the Court in meticulous and entertaining detail. As the nation prepares to vote for President in 2012, the future of the Supreme Court will also be on the ballot.

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The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver

Release Date: September 27th
Read it yet? No
Why I’m excited: I wouldn’t typically recommend a book about a topic as dry as statistics and predictions. However, Silver’s writing is reliably great, and he’s be the man who could pen an arresting book on the topic.

The timing of the release is perfect - I can’t imagine a time I’d like to study up on predictions more than the sprint to a presidential election.

Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger—all by the time he was thirty. The New York Timesnow publishes FiveThirtyEight.com, where Silver is one of the nation’s most influential political forecasters.

Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the “prediction paradox”: The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.

Jake: Atlantic Brewing Company was started in Bar Harbor in 1991 – “on the eve of the microbrewing revolution,” according to their website.

Travis: BAH-HAHBAH DUDE, RIGHT BUCKY?

J: I know, right? Have you spent much time in Bar Harbor? How do you feel about it?

T: Well, Jake, I love Bar Harbor, and all of Mt. Desert Island, to be completely honest. I get the bourgeois and the tourism, comes with the territory with an area that gorgeous. Acadia is the most beautiful place on Earth. Now, you’re a natural born hiker and traditional Mainer. How do you feel on Bar Harbor’s tourism industry?

J: Listen, I can’t knock on the tourism industry in Bar Harbor, because I’m not from there and I know that a large portion of the local economy depends on summer visitors. Like, I imagine driving through there in the winter is akin to being in The Road, if you just replace the radioactive ash with snow and the cannibals with buoys. I don’t want to go on a tirade listing my issues with a certain subject in a hysterical fashion here, to paraphrase Dennis Miller, but there are a lot of places in Maine I avoid in the summer because of the tourists, and Bar Harbor is one of them. The tourists - I’m sure they’re lovely people, but when I can’t drive down a road or walk down a sidewalk because there are hundreds of people in the way who have far more money than I have, wearing sweatshirts that feature a lobster playing cards with a moose in a lighthouse, it makes some part of me wish for a combination land-and-sea border fence that will keep them out of the 23rd state. And how do you feel about revolutions, microbrewing and otherwise?

T: As far as revolutions, I’m glad I have front seats on the indie-brewing front, watching local brewers doing what they do best. On the Robot front, I’m honestly concerned, because the machines will come for us, I just pray I’m dead before it happens. And no, I’m not having kids. I would fear too much for their safety.

J: Atlantic Brewing Company – what do you think about the name?

T: Straight-forward marketing. The creative juices flow a bit overboard when it comes to a title, even with beer names sometimes. I can clearly see ABC (oh my god, that just hit me) got first rights to the key-word “Atlantic.” The salt water is in their blood, and their beer. It’s memorable, and strong, good authority to it. No one else has it.

J: That ABC thing is blowing my mind. I didn’t notice it either.

BLUEBERRY ALE

J: There are a lot of fruity/flavored beers around (these days?): Shipyard’s Blueberry, Applehead, and Pumpkinhead; Sea Dog’s Wild Blueberry, Raspberry Wheat and Apricot; Abita’s raspberry Purple Haze; and Magic Hat’s apricot #9 and elderberry Elder Betty, to name a few. So let’s put this one on front street: Fruit beers. What do you think? Do you like mixing beer and fruit? Are you okay with adding a fruity or vegetabley flavor to the traditional flavors of malt and hops?

T: I feel strongly about this. Fruit beers catch a bad reputation in areas, and there be haters out there who straight disclaim on them. Through personal experience, there is some tension between people who don’t like flavors, and people who honestly enjoy the flavor of apples, blueberries, or pumpkin. This negative connotation must be stopped. I dig on pumpkin beers because I love pumpkins, cider for apples, et cetera. Classic ales will always be there, but for everyone who rejects variety, change or other scary new things: Quit hating. Don’t look good. Just nod and respect, different strokes, you know? This has been a message from Travis Curran, and I endorse it.

J: I’ve got no problem with fruit beers. I’m imagining a strong tradition here – the first brewers, wearing nothing but loincloths and brewing in holes in the ground, just throwing fruit into their beers to see what would happen. I’m not sure this is accurate, but it certainly took place in my brain. I just think fruit beers get out of hand when they try to taste like fruit instead of beer. How do you feel about this one in particular?

T: The Blueberry Ale actually plays the flavor game just right. The bottle will tell you they put blueberries in the mix while brewing it, but the profile of the beer isn’t loaded. I ain’t dropping names, but some other blueberry-types really push it, letting the sugar dominate your senses. Your tongue screams “Holy shit, Blueberry!!” Atlantic lets the blueberry land in the finish, as a sweet afterthought on your palate.

J: You are totally right about how the blueberry taste lands at the end. Like Gabby Douglas on the uneven bars, the real performance is her routine in the air, but if she doesn’t stick the landing it’s all for naught. Atlantic wowed me in the air with a real beer-first fruit beer, then they stuck the landing with that blueberry taste. It’s a beer first, and a handful of blueberries second. Have you ever raked blueberries before?

T: Never with the proper tools (the rake). Only handpicked in the wild, and on acres behind my house in Waterford. Blackberries, too. I would eat blackberries by the quart, which made selling them hard for my mother, because she wouldn’t sell them. I ate them. Love blueberries on pancakes, in my ice cream, showing up on all kinds of levels. It’s a Maine thing, I don’t question why; you can’t ask a fish what type of water it prefers. Or if it ever clocked manual labor in a field for that water, to get back to your question. Do you think Atlantic Brewing helps Maine live up to its national reputation with this choice?

J: Maine is “the number one exporter of blueberries” and “produces 25% of all lowbush blueberries in North America,” according to Wikipedia. From personal experience, I can say that the area of Midcoast Maine where I grew up has a Blueberry Festival and crowns a Blueberry Queen. Blueberries are a Maine thing, and using beer to evangelize our blueberry dominance seems as good a strategy as any.

REAL ALE

J: Oh man, I think I’ve found my favorite of the bunch. I’m predicting here, forecasting into the future, but this strikes me as a quality brown that’s tasty and easy to drink. I’m a man who loves a good brown ale – a REAL brown ale, if you will. The Bar Harbor Real is nutty and malty from start to finish, with a little sticky sweetness to let you know you’re having a good time. I reach for a brown when I’m having pub food, and I could drink bottle after bottle of this with steaks and burgers. What are your thoughts on brown ales?

T: Browns speak tradition. Truly a go-to in case some indecision sets within a group. Let the basic ingredients do the talking. Brown ales always have that classic taste. I don’t know how the Smuttynose guys do it but the Old Brown Dog stands out. No frills, no shticks, a brown just does it right. Going with “Real”, I think the Atlantic guys are letting you know exactly what to expect. This is beer. You’re fucking welcome.

J: Yeah, why is this called a “Real Ale?” Let me take a stab at that too. A lot of ales that you encounter these days? Bullshit. Gussied up swill made with subpar ingredients. You’re not drinking it for taste, know what I mean? Those ales are some fake-ass shit, all advertising and girls in bikinis and no substance. Budweiser is a sponsor of the Olympics, and this is almost enough to make me hate athletes. This ale, though, is the Real Deal Holyfield. This ale is a real friend, one that’s there for you. When you’ve had a bad day, the Bar Harbor Real Ale is going to get real with you, and talk about the stuff that matters, maybe on a porch or in front of a grill. The ABC (still love it) website touts this beer’s three different malts and two different hops. Can you taste them all? How refined is your palate? At what point is it too refined? Shouldn’t putting things in your mouth be fun?

T: Try enough caviar and inevitably you’ll pick favorites. Beer tasting gets real refined, reaching extreme through exposure and research, to the point someone can prefer what coast the hops come from. It is appreciation, and preference. I like more coffee malts than ones that taste like hazelnut. But I see what you’re getting at.. some folks get more into it than others, i.e. over 50% of the “reviews” on websites, deconstructing the beer, using acronyms and scientifically removing the concept of fun. You can see the variety of experiences, and with no context, just skeletons they add fancy words too, most credibility is lost… The way they write it, you might even think they actually don’t like beer. Let me put it like this: I can’t stand anyone who brags about their palate, food or beer or wine, with a holier-than-thou attitude. Pretending opinions align on this giant invisible scale of quality ends up either pretentious or redundant. You either like something, or you don’t. Anyone reading this will agree: people are straight-up snobs on certain topics, so have conversational tact in person, and just count on them giving their two cents to the Internet. [Hey, man. I resemble that remark. - ed.]

J: Existentially speaking, what makes an ale “real” to you?

T: I just ranted about snobs and now you’re all “existentially speaking.” Okay, that’s fine, I’ll play ball. I prefer ale that gets historic. Served in public houses. Shared among friends. My ideal ale is something you pass to an old fellow, off your recommendation, that makes him smile with surprise. “My word,” he says, with a knowing look of common respect. He has a beard. It is salt-and-pepper. Beer should bring you back to a place. And you had a good time. Beer should bring people together. Think campfires. Exactly. Now, this beer was birthed in 1991, and it’s older than most children these days. Did you notice? Call it on its birthday? Will our kids’ kids enjoy it?

J: Can I call this beer “precocious?” This beer is very smart for its age. I think you’re underestimating the ravages of time, though – somebody born in 1991 would be 21. That’s right, there are twenty-somethings running around now who were born in the nineties, that oh-so-recent time when we were watching TGIF and drinking Orbitz. We’re getting old. Now I’m depressed. Hand me another Real Ale, will you? Things just got far too genuine for me.

SUMMER ALE

J: When it comes to a summer beer, I’m looking for something bright and light. Sunshine in a glass. I like wheat beers and hefeweizens, and I’m no expert, but it seems to me like breweries like to draw from these big schools, flavor-wise, when they’re working on a summer ale. It’s like a traditional lager or pilsner, but it’s also got a bit of fruit or wheat, something sweet that makes it light and summery without making it heavier. Listen: They add something, but don’t make it heavier, is what I’m saying. Brewmasters are physics wizards. This ABC Summer Ale hits those light, summery points, with a little sweetness that reminds me of Geary’s or Shipyard’s Summer Ale. Despite the lightness I can still taste the hops… it’s a little spicy, but not as spicy as it smells. That’s not a knock, the spices just leapt at my nose like that shark going for the seagulls in that YouTube video. What do you think is special about summer seasonal beers?

T: Beer labels always throw out the “crisp” and “light” adjectives, if the climate is perfect or not so much these days. Summer brews will always rock the refreshing angle, which includes a lemon wedge (or lime wedge, if that’s your trick). But summer also means a little spice. And I’m not talkin’ HEAT, just a lil’ sumthin sumthin to wake up your taste buds, that you could measure in a dash. I’m crazy on ‘Weizens, so they’re definitely favored in a summer pick over a more watered down lager. I can recognize the need to crack open a cold can and crush it, especially for sporting events. If it’s July-August and even a regular shirt feels like a hot prison, then I’d put my feet up with a white, Belgian-style, and remember why I survived the winter. Atlantic Brewing hits that right on the noggin’.

J: Summer Ale, Summer Olympics. Coincidence?

T: Well, Jacob, I’m a detective, so we don’t believe in coincidences. The Olympic Games are over, but still reside in our hearts. Watching the pinnacle of human achievement does something special to each and every one of us. The same with watching waves crash and roll against the flat, wet sand. Gulls call, children are playing, hey look, bikinis, and you’ve perfectly molded the sand to hold your chilled bottle upright, water precipitates on the glass. I’ll queue up some table-tennis or javelin toss tonight, I’ll drive to the beach tomorrow. Have you seen water polo? That shit is just insane. Do you think Olympic athletes need to unwind with some recreational brewskis too? What about calories?

J: It’s fitting that we drank these while we watched the gymnastics finals, because the Summer Ale is golden like an Olympic medal (USA! USA!). Of course athletes need brewskis. I rarely have the hopes and dreams of a nation resting on my performance at work, and I still feel the need to unwind with a brew, so I can only imagine Olympians feel the same way. I know beer isn’t the healthiest drink, but any calories you get from a cold hoss are going to be burned off in your first triple-rotation breaststroke hurdling javelin toss anyhow, so why not live a little? There’s no “Gatorade Summer.” Leave it to microbreweries to create drinks specifically geared towards the changing seasons. This brew was engineered for summer games, built for track and field, constructed from the ground up to accompany a dip in the pool. I guess what I’m saying is that McKayla Maroney is counting the days until she can have one of these babies legally, calories be damned. From the Atlantic Brewing website: “This ale is light and crisp, yet retains the body and character of a microbrew.” What are they getting at with that “character of a microbrew” line? What does that even mean?

T: I think that copy is really aiming for the cheap seats, some dudes all picking it up because they don’t want to be the third guy to show up with Coronas. “Hey, we’re like other summer beers, but we’re a bit better, cool?” is all I’m hearing. And I believe. Geary’s Summer is spicier, Shipyard is too bland, I would grab a Brooklyn Summer before any of them. And not just to be that guy at the party. If you were to show up to a pool party, with a sixer of Atlantic Brewing Summer Ales, and a pretty girl wanted one, but asked first, how would you describe it?

J: “Hey girl. Let me pop that for you - but don’t bite in just yet. Take a sniff. That’s the smell of summer. That’s the smell of freedom and good times, girl. Now take a taste. Isn’t that sweet? Isn’t that summery? Don’t look at the pool. Close your eyes. That sound, that’s not a pool. That’s the ocean. We’re on a beach, and the sun is shining. I don’t care about the past. The future is laid out in front of us like a blank canvas. Paint with me, girl. Paint the summertime.” I should also note that the entire time, I’m flexing. Was that not clear? It should be, because I’ll be flexing, like, wicked hard.