Joe

As a patent librarian, I often hear of interesting or strange new inventions from colleagues. One that I came across recently is this amazing alarm clock that actually makes you coffee! I don’t know of many beverages that are as polarizing as a cup of joe; most of us either love it or hate it, and those who love it usually have strong opinions about how to drink it (black, IMO). In honor of this amazing beverage, here’s a short book (and movie!) list:

God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee: Journalist Michaele Weissman travels the world trying to find the best cup of coffee. Committed caffeine lovers may relate.

Friends: Does anyone else remember that in the first few episodes Ross, Rachel, Monica, Joey, Chandler, and Phoebe actually hung out in a bar? For the rest of the series they spent so much time in that coffee shop that it’s hard to think of them going anywhere else.

Coffee and Cigarettes: Both coffee and cigarettes figure prominently in other Jim Jarmusch films, but this one is a paean to both. My favorite vignette in this film is the one with Bill Murray and the Wu-Tang Clan.

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work: This book describes, you guessed it, the daily rituals that various artists follow. It’s a fun read, and of course coffee figures in prominently in many of the daily routines. Balzac, in particular, has  feelings on coffee that border on fanatical: “Coffee glides into one’s stomach and sets all of one’s mental processes in motion. One’s ideas advance in column of route like battalions of the Grande Armée. Memories come up at the double, bearing the standards which will lead the troops into battle. The light cavalry deploys at the gallop… Were it not for coffee one could not write, which is to say one could not live.”

from The New York Tribune, 1919

-Irene