We Make Beer

We Make Beer: Inside the Spirit and Artistry of America's Craft Brewers by Sean Lewis, 27 out of 213 pages

The flap copy refers to this book as "an intensive study of beer brewing and...a nation-spanning journey into the heart--and art-- of American beer making." Lewis theoretically looks at different craft brewers across the country and discovers the true soul of craft breweries, the camaraderie, the ethos, the passion behind the requisite beards of brewmasters.

It's a great topic, but Lewis' snobby writing style, mixed with subpar editing, make this nearly unreadable. In the introduction, Lewis goes out of his way to talk down to his readers, defining things that anyone interested enough in craft beer to pick up the book will already know (it doesn't take a brewmaster to know that the foam on top of the draft beer is called the head); he also offers pronunciations that are really uncalled-for (like how to say "wort"). Then four pages later, he's waxing poetic about the "brilliant but delicate" hop profile of a beer, noting that "all it's floral wonders could easily be overshadowed by a hint of sour apple notes from wild yeast or any number of the myriad off flavors that can develop if fermentation temperatures are allowed to vary beyond the yeast's comfort zone." Are we rubes or fellow beer snobs, Mr. Lewis? Cuz you can't have it both ways. I won't even start on the rambling quotes that he includes (it is OK to edit out repetition in quotes, sir) or the flagrant overuse of that vaguest of vague words, "unique."


I really really really wanted to like this book. I flipped through the book and found several breweries I wanted to learn more about, and I considered continuing on, but I thought it safer for the book and my blood pressure to stop. As they say, you don't have to eat the whole apple to know that it's bad.

So avoid this book. Instead, read The Audacity of Hops by Tom Acitelli, which gives a comprehensive history of craft beer and most of the major players in the industry (well, except for those in St. Louis, which is an egregious error, though perhaps not to someone who lives elsewhere).

The Griff

The Griff by Christopher Moore, art by Ian Corson, 160 pages

Let me start this review by saying that Christopher Moore is a genuinely funny writer of some of my favorite books. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal is easily one of my five desert island books, and most of his others are nothing to sneeze at either, with funny (and often absurd) situations, great characterizations, and are just generally well-written.

Then there's The Griff. This is Moore's first, and hopefully last, attempt at a graphic novel. Moore and Corson present us with the disjointed tale of dragonlike alien beasts (the titular Griff) that have, for some reason, attacked Earth. In the foreword, Moore notes that this graphic novel is the result of a story idea he had that he felt would be better served in a visual medium, preferably a movie. So he and Corson created a script for The Griff and then shoved it in a drawer and forgot about it until he felt like taking a stab at a graphic novel.

The thing is, it shows. The dialogue is thin at best (most of the noises in the book are onomatopoeia), and the art seems much more like story boarding than actually moving the plot along. The characters and artwork are equally bland, while the storyline consists of disjointed action sequences. Rather than a graphic novel, this story would be better served as a SyFy Channel movie a la Sharknado (though that would probably be better than this).

Bottom line: Don't read this book unless you're a masochistic Christopher Moore completionist (like yours truly). If you want to read a Christopher Moore book, read Lamb, or Bloodsucking Fiends, Sacre Bleu, or Coyote Blue, or Practical Demonkeeping. Anything but this.