Books That Go Good With Coffee

It's always nice to sip a cup of java while reading, so it can be said that any book goes good with coffee (assuming coffee is your thing), but some books just seem meant to be read while ingesting caffeine. Here's where you can mention them, or recommend them, or whatever them.

Here are a couple of my faves to read with good cup of the black stuff.

Donald Barthelme's Sixty Stories, one of my favorite short story collections, seems particularly suited to be enjoyed with coffee. Scattered, cerebral and funny.

Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary is a sharp piece of cynical satire that can be dipped into at any time, and is well suited for when the bastards are beginning to run you down (which is usually when I start to reach for the coffee mug in any case).

Satire seems particularly well suited to drinking coffee while being read. I've enjoyed Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift and S.J. Perelman while under the influence of caffeine, and it seemed to work out pretty well. Oddly, existentialist philosophy was practically born from a coffee mug, and still feels at home being read in a coffeehouse.

A book that goes really well with coffee is Flash Fiction. It's a collection of stories that are extremely short snippets of highly concentrated brilliance... kind of like espresso.

My latest go of sinking into a book & a cup of coffee was with Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix. no parallells between the story and coffee, but I really enjoyed my mug of coffee and the story!

Collected fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

I find that anything by Steinbeck makes a great coaster.

~Jimm

The Devil's Cup by Stewart Lee Allen is impossible to read without a cup of coffee in your other hand.... and incidentally, why are books about coffee almost always titled with something sinful?

Any book goes well with a good strong cup of black coffee. Preferrably early in the morning before the family is up. Peace, quiet, coffee, book. Oh, yea!

Right now my coffee book is Agatha Christie An Autobiography. The three of us spent about 30 minutes this morning before the day got busy.

Here's another one:

The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski

a good americano is key to the enjoyment of any good book. im from ireland and could literally spend a day in my local bookshop drinking coffee absorbed in a novel/ poetry. Recently "crime and punishment" has been my preferred indulgence although i plan to re-read "the fountainhead" next

Although I read mostly mysteries, they don't make good coffee books because I get so engrossed in reading I forget to drink. And I hate lukewarm or cold coffee (unless it's iced). So, for me, non-fiction books are the best to read with a cup of coffee.

Currently I'm reading The Stone of Heaven. Fascinating and disturbing history of imperial green jade. Much is appalling, not only the actions of the ancient rulers of China and Burma, but also the devastation wrought by the British in their days of empire. It's a book to be read a little bit at a time.

I've found, repeatedly, that the Aubrey-Maturin books by Patrick O'Brian are excellent coffee books. Jack and Stephen are frequently found drinking coffee -- fresh roasted and ground true Mocha, if they can get it.

I've drunk (coffee, port, etc.) my through all twenty books three times now, and perhaps a fourth is in order, now that I think about it.

So far my favorite book of late to read over coffee in my local cafe is The Master and Margarita.

A book that goes great with coffee is The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. Another one is The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford or, and that's a very obvious one, How Starbucks Saved my Life by Michael Gates Gill.

What I recently discovered was that Shakespeare goes very good with wine. =)

Given that any book is good with a cup of coffee, the author that came to mind was Jane Austen. It needs to be quiet and peaceful (without husband and daughter running around) so that means early in the morning before they're up. Just me, the book, the coffee, and the kitties.

A good cup of Gevalia Stockholm Roast brewed strong, black, no sugar. Can't beat it.

bardsfingertips, that is one of my favourite books as well!

Here's my checklist for the perfect book to go with my mug of coffee:
1. Not too engrossing - I don't want to forget about my coffee as I race through the book (holiday-reading when I have time to kill!)
2. Not too heavy-going - If I lose my place/train of thought every time I look away to take a sip it's no good (commute-reading when I have no choice but to read on!)
3. A nicely weighted hardback - It'll stay open on my page so I can keep my coffee in my hand

Donogh, great checklist, especially the first two points.

I concur. Don't read Gravity's Rainbow over coffee... you know how many times I lost my place?!?! I had to read about bananas over and over again :-P

I'm not sure about the not too heavy point. For me, you can pause to mull somtehing over while you take a sip - maximizing your enjoyment of both.

I usually like to drink tea when I'm reading but when I read Bleak House by Dickens I need coffee. I just need something stronger, bitter and darker to go with that book.

Funny writing isn't good for coffee-drinking reading for me, it tends to get spewed out my nose. Likewise religious subject matter isn't ideal for coffee-drinking reading because I forget I'm drinking coffee and start screaming imprecations at the author(s), thereby baptizing the pages.

Best choice is, sort of my default, a non-fiction work about biology...Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World or Apples; or poetry. It helps me stay awake when reading Spenser or *shudder* Milton.

Hee, hee -- I just realized I've fallen prey to a stereotype -- every time someone mentions a British author, whether it's Dickens or Austen or even the mention of a British author in the title like The Jane Austen Book Club, I think TEA instead of coffee. (Though Shakespeare and wine made total sense -- presumably, even in my subsurface mind, there is a point before which the British do not get associated with tea.)

As for coffee, textbooks and academic writings generally come to mind.

Actually, Deesinings, coffee was popular in Britain before tea reached their shores. The first British coffee house opened in Oxford in 1651. In 1657 one of the then very popular coffee houses began selling tea. Tea became the preferred drink about 1700. So you are right to not associate Shakespeare with tea.

Btw, I first became acquainted with these entertaining facts via a book I enjoyed with coffee, and sometimes tea, and even with wine: A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage.

If I recall correctly, coffee was actually more popular in England than in Italy in the early days of coffee usage in the west.

I like mysteries with coffee. I want to read more and so coffee helps to keep me at my labors. One of my favorite coffee books of the last couple of years is The Coffee Trader by David Liss. It's really all about the creation of the commodities markets in Amsterdam in the 1600's but it is also so much more. Most of the action takes place in one of the newfangled coffee houses that were becoming all the rage in Amsterdam. But the book is not about coffee itself. Great coffee book though.

Cleo Coyle came up with a series, the Coffee House Mysteries. Set in the Village Blend, a small coffee house in New York, her heroines are usually caught in murder mysteries that require their investigative powers. The best part? Coyle includes recipes based on coffee - everything from pastries to main dishes in coffee sauce!

Honoré de Balzac is a must to read with coffee. He was a coffee fiend and was powered by coffee. Tragically, it is also what caused his death... therefore I try to limit myself to two cups a day!

I must say that one of my favorite books to read in a quiet room with a cup of coffee was The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

Though, I enjoy just about anything with a cup of coffee, especially books with that existentialist-beatnik-watches-a-Tim-Burton-movie feel to it. :)

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate has part of the setting in a coffee shop/ delicatessen in Edinbrugh. Isabel Dalhousie has a niece who has this shop and Isabel substitutes as the barrista while the neice goes on a vacation. While coffee isn't the main focus of the story the shop is where Isabel meets the subject of this mystery.

Good books about libraries are too rare. Think about brewing a forbidden-in-the-stacks cappucino and sipping while reading This Book is Overdue!, which I just reviewed in my thread...post #31.