I love to read.
……….fantasy, scifi, historicals, erotica, mysteries, quirky nonfiction.
I love to drink.
……….tea, beer, cherry juice, chlorine-free water.
Sometimes a good book is even better with the right drink.
Most of the time I simply have water or juice with my murders and my factual dungeon crawls and my space-orbiting dramas.
For my rowdy, thief-permeated, action-swinging, monsters galore fantasies, I like a nice beer. I especially like my chocolate beer. (Don’t stick your tongue at me until you’ve tried it; besides I might take it as an invitation 
For some more lush, I do enjoy a lovely tea (black cardamom in the morning and mint or orange at night). I find that steamy scent coming off my creamy tea lets me take in the tale so much more.
Do you do the same? Do you find a certain drink adds just the right accent to your reading experience?
Coffee mostly. Black, warm, soothing. Gotta sip it, enjoy it, just like the book! In the winter I love chai, and any kind of hot chocolate. I think that hot chocolate is my favorite, esp now tht I make a mix myself. I don’t know why but the mix my MIL taught me is the most delicious ever. It isn’t officially winter until the afternoon ofcuppa chocolate and a good story together. I’ve discovered that robots and chocolate go very well together, not so much with coffee. But coffee and Batman in the morning are perfect!
Oh! and Chlled green tea latte is great in the summer with an adventure novel.
Cool article, man!
I could see how weather would also affect what I drink during reading time.
coffee for romances, dramas, and melodramas!
but I’ve noticed that I want to drink what the characters in the book are drinking. When I’m on a fantasy/dark fantasy kick, I find I drink a lot more beer and wine, because that’s what the characters in those books are drinking (safer than drinking the water!!). If I’m reading some more contemporary, i’m all about juice, tea, coffee, water, soda type stuff.
hmmmm….. no wonder i like dark fantasy so much!
Too true! When I was reading Scott Lynch, I wanted some of those crazy drinks the Bastards gulped, sipped, and savored.
My beverage of choice for different books depends more on the time of day that I’m reading than anything else. Coffee if it’s a weekend morning, tea if it’s evening, and wine if it’s in the bathtub. Tea is my overall preference though.
wine in the bathtub, so decadent!!
also, I’m totally stealing that idea. no more iced tea in the bath, it’s wine, all the way.
As a reader, I love a drink that coordinates with my mood, which of course coordinates with my book. I like wine or especially champagne with my literary-leaning works, a righteous high-octane tea with my nonfiction, a beer with lighter fare.
As a writer of fantasy fiction, I’ve actually given a fair amount of thought to the drinks that go with my novels. The Shadow of the Sun is definitely a whiskey book. The characters are drinking whiskey all the damn time. The forthcoming Heart of Darkness is one part beer, one part slow-aged cognac. Novel #4 in the series (The Affairs of Dragons, for what that’s worth) is an absinthe novel. And of course there is the Sunshadow Ale, created for The Shadow of the Sun…which never would have been born without the intervention of Lady Darkcargo.
Oh yeah! If I make it to the east coast again, I am going to have to check out some Sunshadow Ale.
Do the absinthe drinkers in your novel do it the fancy way, dripping it slowly over a cube of sugar?
You absolutely must have some. It is RIGHTEOUS.
And re: the absinthe: yes, of course. They have all the props. The protag is an absolute absinthe fetishist.
For me it’s usually tea, hot tea. Often Earl Gray, which I discovered LONG before Jean Luc. For cozier reads It’s sometimes a nice black tea with an added dribble of vanilla or almond extract and extra sweetening.
Those are the usuals, But if If it’s VERY cold, and I am feeling VERY self indulgent, it’s hot buttered rum. For summer outside reading it’s gin and tonic with extra lime.
I have also noticed that books set in colder climes tend to require something warm and spiritous whatever my actual current locale.
Doesn’t matter, as long as it comes in a sippy-cup…