Book Review: Cocktails and Mock-Tales by Julianne McLean & Mark Lynch

Title: Cocktales & Mock-Tales
Authors: Julianne McLean & Mark Lynch
Publisher: ASJ Publishing
Pages: 90
Genre: Humor

Cocktails and Mock- Tales is not just about alcoholic beverages. The book is about sensations that tickle your tastebuds and humour that tickles your fancy. It includes non-alcoholic beverages that the whole family can enjoy and even herbal recipes for the adventurous.

Have one extremely tall high ball glass and a giant cocktail shaker at the ready

Ingredients:

Unlimited centilitres of wit and humour

9 cl or 3oz titillating snippets of history and gossip

Add flavours of exotic destinations

A dusting of spice mixed with satire

Several centilitres of high spirits (optional)

Shake with vigour. Garnish with an open mind and your own sense of humour

Now you are ready to truly laugh and savour Cocktails and Mock Tales!

Amaze your friends and family with your knowledge of the origins of international beverages and excite their tastebuds with these exotic sensations.

For More Information

• Cocktails & Mock-Tales is available at Amazon.

My Review:

I remember the first alcoholic drink I ever had in my life.  I had just gotten married (I know, late bloomer) and we were invited over to a couple's house to watch a new show just aired that fall called Walton's Mountain.  The drink was a frozen lime daiquiri.  I don't know whether it was the alcohol, the ambience with friends or the fact that they were joking with me about coming from Virginia as that's the locale Walton's Mountain was based, but I had never laughed so much in all my life.

The next time I laughed so hard was reading Julianne McLean and Mark Lynch's new humor book, COCKTAILS AND MOCK-TALES.  Oh what can I say about this book?  My goodness, everything!  First lets start off with the illustrations by Mark Lynch..omg I want him to illustrate my next book!  Colorful, whimsy, cute, funny, omg.  Love them and they add so much to this adoringly charming book.

Next, the narrative.  Julianne McLean does and EXCELLENT job.  It is so cute!  Amidst the wonderful recipes that are out of this world and nowhere else will you learn of these ingredients but this book, she starts out by explaining the funny story of how this book was conceived, then goes on to explain the origin of the cocktail which I didn't know and I'm sure a lot of people don't either and would love to know! Did you know that alcohol started out as a preventative of disease?  It's not just for escaping, there were medicinal uses for alcohol.  It reminds me of the cowboy days when someone would get shot and they'd throw down alcohol to aleviate the pain while the doctor wrenched the bullet out of them.

This book is so much fun to read and if you ever want to make a cocktail and don't know the ingredients - and I mean special cocktails not something you grab over the Internet, this book is for you.  It would make a great gift for that bartender in your life.

I give this book 5 book trees (wish I could give more!)!