A Literary Drinking Game
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Sometimes a book has repeated phrases or actions. Sometimes writers have quirks that are repeated in everything they ever wrote ever. Sometimes you can’t help but turn reading into a literary drinking game.
We’ve done a more extensive literary drinking game before, but this one is simple.
Take a drink every time…
… Bartleby says “I would prefer not to” in Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener.
… Junior gets punched in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
… Humbert refers to Lolita as variations of Dolores in Vladimir Nabakov’s Lolita. (If you want to get crazy, also drink every time you see the word “nymphette.”)
… Mark blows something up and/or almost kills himself in Andy Weir’s The Martian.
… Ana refers to her “inner goddess” in E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey.
… You are asked if something sparks joy in Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. … Gatsby says “Old sport” in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. … Ron makes a phallic double entendre in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. … You spy “And yet.” in Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist. … “Deadpanned” is used as a verb in any John Green novel.
… You run into a dash in any Emily Dickinson poem. … A footnote contains a poop-related joke in any Mary Roach book (But mostly in Gulp). … Maddy talks about how much she loves The Little Prince or how much she hates Lord of the Flies in Nicola Yoon’s Everything Everything. … Fire is mentioned in Toni Morrison’s Sula. … Point-of-view shifts without warning in any Jane Austen novel.
… Scout, Jem, and Dill find something hidden in the tree outside the Radley house in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. … Someone hallucinates in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. … The old cookbook is mentioned in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You. … A sentence is longer than a page in any William Faulkner novel. … A veiled sexy double-entendre is spotted in any William Shakespeare play. Happy drinking! And reading. Be safe, etc.
