Are you a beer drinker on a diet?  Are you counting carbs, or calories, but don’t know how to do that when beer is involved?  We have a book that can help.  Does My Butt Look Big in this Beer? by Bob Skilnik contains nutritional information for more than 2,000 beers worldwide.  Good book to help you enjoy the suds in moderation.

Funny how a reviewer gave it 1 star out of 5… not because the info in the book is bad or wrong, but because “as a beer drinker, I don’t want to know these things.”  Um, don’t buy the book, then?  It’s not like you have to read it if you’d prefer to hide your head in the sand.  Good for calorie-conscious beer lovers though.

The Houston Chronicle recently ran a good review of five top wine books.  Here’s a look at what they reviewed:

• The Battle for Wine And Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization by Alice Fiering.  A one-woman crusade against wine consultants and the 100-point wine scoring system, and a search for authenticity in wine appreciation.
• Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines.  A look at the 101 most tantalizing wines the author has discovered while traveling the world.
• Taste: A Life in Wine by Anthony Terlato.  Read the words of the CEO who enjoyed great success bringing Pinot Grigio to the United States.
• The Wine Trials by Robin Goldstein.  This author has been mentioned here before, as the one who created a fake restaurant and exposed Wine Spectator by winning their Award of Excellence.  Here she uses brown-bag tests to find $15 wines that stand up against $50 to $150 wines.

Find many more great books about wine in Mid-South Alcoholic Supply’s bookstore.

The Toronto Globe and Mail recently interviewed Ryan Jennings and David Steele, author of two cookbooks, Cooking with Booze and the newly-released Entertaining with Booze.  “There are flavors in alcohol that you can’t find in your spice rack,” comments Jennings, giving the example of Jagermeister, which is distilled with about 50 different herbs and botanicals.  In the books there is a recipe for Alsatian Choucroute Garnie, a soup with sauerkraut, smoked sausage, bacon, and parsnip.  Other recipes include mojito lamb popsicles, and a cucumber sandwich in which the cucumbers are marinated in gin.  There’s also tequila strawberry shortcake, baby back ribs marinated in Jack Daniels, lamb tagine enhanced with port, and pumpkin and coconut mousse flavored with candied ginger and coconut rum.

These are two of the many fine books you can find in the bookstore at Mid-South Alcoholic Supply.

This LA Times article reviews a new book about beer, Red, White and Brew: An American Odyssey.  The author took some time to travel across the U.S., stopping in 14 regional breweries and talking with the current owners, managers, brewmasters, consumers, and anyone else he met along the way.  Visitng breweries like Yuengling and Leinenkugel, he talks with the people who run them about the breweries’ history, current challenges in the marketplace, and how being in a particular region affects the beer that is brewed.  Everything from recently-founded microbreweries to fifth-generation family breweries are covered, although author Brian Yaeger stayed away from the huge breweries like Anheuser-Busch.  One owner of the book describes Yaeger as “a top notch interviewer,” even more impressive considering he’s usually already downed a few beers by the start of his interviews.

You can get your copy of the book here.

For ladies, there’s probably no more amazing feeling than finding out you’re pregnant, learning that you’re going to bring a new life into the world.  However, there’s also a side of pregnancy that positively sucks, and that is that you can’t drink for 40 or so weeks.  The Newly Non-Drinking Girl’s Guide to Pregnancy offers helpful advice on how to get through nights out, parties, and weekends without having a cocktail.  It also includes recipes for 50 mocktails.  These allow you to enjoy the flavor of a cocktail, the feeling of the glass in your hand, and the camaraderie of taking part in drinking activities without actually consuming the booze.

If you know someone who recently found out she was pregnant, this would make a great gift, especially if she was a big-time partier before it happened.

One of my readers just e-mailed me. She told me she’s planning a trip to Oregon, which of course is wine country. She asked for a few recommendations for good books on wine. So I looked through Mid-South Alcoholic Supply’s Books about Drinking and realized our book inventory was a lot more beer-centric than I intended it to be. I went and did some research and added several good books on wine. You can find them in the updated Books about Drinking section. The highly-regarded Windows on the World Wine Course is on page 1 of the books list.

Makes me wonder… should I split the books section into several sections? Maybe sections on books about beer, wine, and liquors, as well as a section on general books about drinking. Let me know if you think that would help.