Matt Salesses Guide to Books & Booze

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!

Books & Booze is a new mini-series of sorts here on TNBBC that will post every Friday in October. The participating authors were challenged to make up their own drinks, name and all, or create a drink list for their characters and/or readers using drinks that already exist. 

Let Matt Salesses show you how it's done:

How to make my book, I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying, into a drinking game.

Drink: soju

Time: 3 hours

Drunkenness: guaranteed

Here are the rules:

1. Don't bring anything you might lose--my 1st time drinking soju, I either lost my wallet or had it stolen; I don't remember most of the night, so!

2. Play by the cultural rules: turn away from an elder when you drink; serve the person you are with and let yourself be served; always pour or receive a drink with two hands if the person you are with is above you in age or stature; if someone says, "one shot," you have to down the entire shot.

3. Drink anytime the narrator does something crummy. Drink double anytime he does something nice.

4. Read aloud and drink anytime you slur or get tongue-tied.

5. Drink until you feel Korean.

Warning - here are some things that may happen to you if you drink too much soju: selfies, bunny ears, karaoke, piggyback rides, passing out, addiction to soju.

Matthew Salesses is the author of I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying. He also wrote The Last Repatriate , and two chapbooks,Our Island of Epidemics and We Will Take What We Can Get . He was adopted from Korea at age two, returned to Korea, and married a Korean woman. He writes a column about his wife and baby for The Good Men Project. His other essays and fiction appear in The New York Times Motherlode blog, Glimmer Train, The Rumpus, Hyphen, Koream, Witness, American Short Fiction, and others. He has received awards from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, PANK, Glimmer Train, Mid-American Review, HTMLGIANT, The University of New Orleans, and IMPAC. He did his MFA at Emerson College (2009), where he was the Presidential Fellow and editedRedivider, and now serves as Fiction Editor for the Good Men Project.