If you’ve ever hosted or been to a book club meeting, you know that you will discuss the book in question for approximately ten to fifteen minutes before the conversation turns to sex. Why not at least attempt to keep things on a literary bent (and bender) and try something besides chardonnay. Here are ten cocktails that characters were drinking in novels, links to their recipes, and some quotes to make you sound super smart, especially to that one snotty chick nobody likes but always brings good food so we keep our mouths shut.

1. Gin Gimlet – Philip Marlowe, The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

“You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you.”

2. Singapore Sling, Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

“We can’t stop here, this is bat country!”

3. White Angel, Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

“Would you reach in the drawer there and give me my purse. A girl doesn’t read this sort of thing without her lipstick.”

4. Jack Rose, Jake Barnes, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

“How did you go bankrupt?”

Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

5. Mint Julep, Daisy Buchanan, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Sophisticated – God, I’m sophisticated.”

6. Gin Rickey, Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Her voice is full of money.”

7. Sidecar, Arthur Rushkin, The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

“Bullshit reigns.”

8. Hot Toddy, Brick Pollitt, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

“What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?—I wish I knew… Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can…”

9. Webster F. Street Layaway Plan, Doc, Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

“If a man ordered a beer milkshake he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known.”

10. Alexander Cocktail, Anthony Blanche, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

“I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I’m old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.”

(Feature Image via Sobur)