Punny Novels
After a day in court, Atticus Finch takes the edge off with a little Patrón.
[Tequila Mockingbird]
You will not find the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare texts in England; it’s in this D.C. library.
[The Folger]
His much-praised 2019 debut novel is comprised of a letter by Little Fox to his mother.
Ocean Vuong
Raskolnikov may have eased his guilt by listening to “Oblivion” or something from 2020’s Miss Anthropocene
Grimes and Punishment
This play opens on a ship, and is the only Shakespearean work to feature a wizard.
[The Tempest]
Banville, Hemingway, and Murdoch all titled novels with this body of water.
Sea
Robert Penn Warren’s Willie Stark might have had a livelier gubernatorial campaign running against Joe Exotic.
[All the Tiger King’s Men]
Shakespeare first wrote “the game is afoot” in Henry V; this author popularized it in 1905’s “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange.”
[Arthur Conan Doyle]
Gary Shteyngart’s latest takes its title from this village in Long Island.
Lake Success
You could soundtrack Colson Whitehead’s latest to these maligned Canadian rockers, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
[The Nickelback Boys]
In the third act of Anthony and Cleopatra this state is called “the green sickness.”
[Envy/Jealousy]
Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny, and Louis each speak for long stretches in this Woolf novel.
Stephen Dedalus may have had more breakthroughs had he read the famed Swiss psychiatrist’s Red Book.
[A Portrait of the Artist as a Jung Man]
Superstitious actors refer to this as “the Bard’s play” while in a theater.
[Macbeth]
This Richard Adams adventure takes place in southern England, though not on the coast: it’s set in the leporine warrens of the interior.
Watership Down