“There’s plenty of CDC-recommended advice for fighting the coronavirus, like keeping your hands clean and distancing yourself from others. But for all of the folks starving for love and affection while stuck in their homes, I’ve got some other advice: It’s time for us to get over our sexist misconceptions of the romance genre and pick up romance novels en masse instead.” Ain’t nobody got time for that romance snobbery. “There’s a famous saying that truth is stranger than fiction, so it stands to reason that reality is simply more interesting than fiction. That is probably why writers so frequently base characters on people they have met, people who have quirkier and more interesting traits than anything the writer could conjure himself. Here is a list of some classic characters you may not have known were based on real people.” Scrooge, Snape, Sherlock and more. “In Washington, D.C., Chantal Tseng hosts weekly Literary Cocktails events at the aptly named Reading Room, a cozy back nook with some 3,000 donated books filling the walls, within the larger bar Petworth Citizen. Each week, a new tome or author takes center stage, and Tseng crafts a cocktail menu to match. ‘The starting point is to read the book, and I’ll make note of certain passages and quotes as I go,’ she says. ‘Often, there will be ingredients referenced in the writing, like sage, orange trees, teas, gin, wine, whiskey, or whatever the case may be. But also I just riff off associations I have in my own cocktail library in my head.’” Making up literary cocktails inspired by my reading is probs gonna be my new social distancing hobby.
