These Are The 5 Best Beverages To Pair With Your Book
Reading isn’t to be taken lightly. Sure, you can sit down and just read but you aren’t embracing the bigger picture. In case you aren’t sure what the bigger picture involves, it’s these: blankets, snacks, and drinks. Sometimes a bath, when times are hard. Just. Don’t. Drop. The. Book.
The first thing to think about when you sit down and read is what you’re going to sip on while you read. Curled up with a good book, there’s every chance it will engross you for hours and you need to stay hydrated, but you can’t just sit down with a Lucozade and hope for the best. Your drink of choice when reading is serious business.
Is this news? Did you not realize how important it was to carefully choose your beverage? Well, fear not! Here are several drinks that are best suited to a good, long read.
Tea
Tea is an old faithful. It calms nerves, dries tears, and brings us peace in traumatic times. So for a relaxing session of reading, what better is there? As a Brit, I am peer-pressured daily into drinking copious amounts of tea and it can get a little boring. Solution: spice things up with some flavored teas. Peach, raspberry, mint, the choices are endless. Better yet, take a visit to Chinatown and get something with a name you can’t read, let alone pronounce.
Hot Chocolate with Cream
Another old faithful, hot chocolate is perfect for warming you up. Trudging home in the rain is a perfect excuse to wrap up in a blanket and sip hot chocolate while delving into the latest bestseller. Any situation in which you are both cold and reading, hot chocolate is a winner. Broken boiler? Hot chocolate. Snowed in? Hot chocolate. Stranded in an igloo in the North Pole? Hot chocolate. Just don’t forget the cream and marshmallows.
Smoothies
Recommended while reading upbeat books. If you’re reading something happy, or something inspiring, smoothies are the way to go. Whoever heard of anyone crying while drinking a smoothie? It’s absurd.
Fruity and full of good stuff (just don’t use kale, bleagh), smoothies will give you your five-a-day and make you feel wonderful. Unlike hot chocolate, smoothies are perfect for summer reading, so take your beach read and sunscreen, and grab yourself a smoothie. The sun won’t be around for long!
Coffee
Another old favorite, but this one makes us fit to function in the mornings (just about). While reading, coffee serves its own purpose: to pull all-nighters and finish that book that you can’t put down. Reading isn’t just a hobby, it’s also a sport. One in which we push ourselves to the limit and read a record number of chapters, even if we have to get up for work at 5 a.m. Readers are dedicated athletes indeed, and coffee is the perfect beverage to help us smash our personal best.
Tequila
You had to see there was going to be a booze entry, right? While alcohol can ruin the reading experience a little bit (especially if you’re all-out wasted), tequila is a rare exception. It’s a fun drink and one cocktail can help take the edge off any lingering stress before you settle down to relax with your book.
If you’re surprised tequila is here instead of wine, here’s why. While wine is great for giving us a buzz, it’s too easy to have that second or third glass which distorts the reading experience. Plus, all that booze will give you one major headache in the morning. So, for reads, tequila is the winner. Just remember to have snacks at the ready to get that salty taste out of your mouth.
For the perfect book, there’s a perfect drink. Experiment with flavor and don’t forget to keep alcohol off the menu to really enjoy yourself: this is a library, not a bar! 
