MemeMachineGo!

When I heard there was a new Tom Robbins book, B Is for Beer, I rushed to the library website to put a hold on it.

If you're a Tom Robbins completist, you'll want to, too. If not, then not so much. The cover says "A children's book for grown-ups" and "A grown-up book for children," but it's mostly "Tom Robbins' love letter to beer."

The narrative, in places, directly addresses a presumptive audience of a child being read aloud to by a parent or grandparent, a device I found mostly annoying in a book few would consider appropriate for a young child. And it tried too often to wring humor from our six-year-old heroine misunderstanding and mispronouncing new words.

I did, though, enjoy the book's guided tour of the history of beer.