Scan barcode
bev_reads_mysteries's review against another edition
4.0
As always, Amis is highly entertaining. More so here because this is a topic he most evidently enjoys. Although I'm sure some of his advice is outdated, that does not prevent the material from being relevantly amusing.
jinxy's review
3.0
I started this last year for Non-Fiction November, but put it aside without finishing it. very glad to get it completed for this year. A nice little volume of collected articles and drink recipes.
nitessine's review
3.0
Everyday Drinking is actually a compilation of three works – On Drink, Every Day Drinking and How's Your Glass?. The first is a short book on, well, drink, the second a collection of columns he wrote for a paper, and the third a quiz book. The introduction to this compilation is written by the inimitable Christopher Hitchens, which itself qualifies as a selling point.
On these pages, Kingsley Amis opines on beer, booze and wine, on drinking habits and everything else related. His style is erudite and entertaining, but he writes from the perspective of an Englishman in the 60s and 70s, and in some parts the material is noticeably and painfully dated. Additionally, as the introduction notes, it occasionally repeats itself. Indeed, Every Day Drinking is particularly bad in this respect. Newspaper columns in general are a form of text that lends itself especially badly to compilations. They are short pieces best read at a week's distance from one another, not one after the other in quick succession.
The most interesting and gracefully aged material in the book are the General Principles spread around On Drink, such as G.P.7: "Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naïve—or worse."
Amis also offers up a chapter on a rare topic – the hangover. Many have written about drinking, but analytical treatises of the hangover are few and far between. Mind you, I do not recognize my own mornings after from his text. Hangovers, like everything else relating to drink, are ultimately subjective things. The matter requires more research.
Well-read, well-written, but badly aged, Everyday Drinking is an amusing diversion to those of us who not only like our drink but like to understand it as well.
On these pages, Kingsley Amis opines on beer, booze and wine, on drinking habits and everything else related. His style is erudite and entertaining, but he writes from the perspective of an Englishman in the 60s and 70s, and in some parts the material is noticeably and painfully dated. Additionally, as the introduction notes, it occasionally repeats itself. Indeed, Every Day Drinking is particularly bad in this respect. Newspaper columns in general are a form of text that lends itself especially badly to compilations. They are short pieces best read at a week's distance from one another, not one after the other in quick succession.
The most interesting and gracefully aged material in the book are the General Principles spread around On Drink, such as G.P.7: "Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naïve—or worse."
Amis also offers up a chapter on a rare topic – the hangover. Many have written about drinking, but analytical treatises of the hangover are few and far between. Mind you, I do not recognize my own mornings after from his text. Hangovers, like everything else relating to drink, are ultimately subjective things. The matter requires more research.
Well-read, well-written, but badly aged, Everyday Drinking is an amusing diversion to those of us who not only like our drink but like to understand it as well.
satyridae's review against another edition
3.0
I loved the first half of this book. The recipes are interesting, the opinions quite firm, and the tone decidedly British. I share Amis' bias regarding single malt scotch but we disagree wildly on gin. The book IS repetitive (it's a collection of newspaper columns, for the most part, and a certain amount of repetition is forgivable in that context) and could have been edited to remove some of that. Worth a look, especially for the Anglophilic bibber.
gengelcox's review against another edition
3.0
I joked with a family member who asked what I was going to read next that I hoped this was going to be a "how to" book. While it could conceivably be followed in some instances, Everyday Drinking is actually a collection of three smaller books that themselves were collections of the newspaper writings on alcohol by Kingsley Amis, more famous as the author of such novels as [book:Lucky Jim|395182] and [book:The Green Man|249863], although it is pretty apparent from this book that he was more than familiar with the artistic merits of a couple of cocktails before and, especially, after the work day. This was a good addition to my growing library on bacchanalia, as it fulfills my rigorous requirements of (a) being more than just a recipe book (I have enough of those now, plus there's always the Internet Cocktail Database) and (b) having a strong, personal, opinionated voice. Amis has the latter in spades, as he ranges between saying that drinking is always a subjective enterprise to lambasting the heathens who would mix something with a single-malt scotch (even Drambuie, as in the Rusty Nail, which is better suited to mixing with a blend, in both his and my entirely not-so-humble opinions).
Amis is clear that he's a beer man with a taste for gin, and that while he has some expert and experience with other liquor and wine, that's not where his heart lies. He does pretty well at covering the gamut, still, and as an intermediate wine drinker, I still found plenty to learn from him. These columns are somewhat dated, having been written mainly the in the late 70s and early 80s, as far as I can tell, but given that everything that once was old in cocktails is now new again, that's not so much of a problem. Finally, I was happy to obtain from this at least one new drink that I've quickly grown to enjoy quite a lot: the "Pink Gin," which is simply gin with a couple of dashes of Angostura (or other) bitters (I suggest serving it on the rocks if you don't keep the gin in the freezer as I do). It's a wonderful drink for those for whom adding ever the sight of the vermouth bottle to a martini reduces its dry nature; the bitters actually increases the dry quotient. Marvelous!
Amis is clear that he's a beer man with a taste for gin, and that while he has some expert and experience with other liquor and wine, that's not where his heart lies. He does pretty well at covering the gamut, still, and as an intermediate wine drinker, I still found plenty to learn from him. These columns are somewhat dated, having been written mainly the in the late 70s and early 80s, as far as I can tell, but given that everything that once was old in cocktails is now new again, that's not so much of a problem. Finally, I was happy to obtain from this at least one new drink that I've quickly grown to enjoy quite a lot: the "Pink Gin," which is simply gin with a couple of dashes of Angostura (or other) bitters (I suggest serving it on the rocks if you don't keep the gin in the freezer as I do). It's a wonderful drink for those for whom adding ever the sight of the vermouth bottle to a martini reduces its dry nature; the bitters actually increases the dry quotient. Marvelous!
More...