Reviews

Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol by Mallory O'Meara

stine_0's review against another edition

funny informative medium-paced

5.0

audreyjo85's review against another edition

funny informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

aranafyre's review against another edition

5.0

I love this book. I highly recommend the audiobook because Mallory reads it herself. It is brilliant.

So much excellent history. This is the feminist history of women and alcohol everyone should read.

I got the audiobook through audible. Below they recommend books and completely missed the feminist part. Every recommended book was written by a man even the one titled Whiskey Women. While men can be feminists I would be really surprised to learn the authors of these books are.

samanders13's review against another edition

funny informative inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

4.25

Really enjoyed this read. I’ve recommended it to a lot of people based on the author’s light and funny voice -dripping with sarcastic wit and laugh-out-loud funny. My one criticism is that, although the author is correct that a lot of repression of alcohol in history is tied to class and misogyny, she did get awfully repetitive about that fact to the point of being a little annoying about it.

natyourusual_'s review against another edition

I don’t like ascribing modern day morality and views to historical figures and cultures as it skews our understanding of their lives and societies. I kept trying to take the book for what it was but whenever I knew some context for what she was talking about I couldn’t help thinking “I get what you’re getting at but that’s not quite accurate.” For example, when she talks about “Ancient Greece” (but really just means a small part of Athenian history) and is talking about how all the women were treated in ALL of Ancient Greece… it just really bothered me and I couldn’t get into it further.

jaredwill_'s review against another edition

4.0

This book delivers exactly what it says it will. It's a history of women and alcohol and an explanation of how the two are intertwined and how the patriarchy has attempted to keep them separate because of how scared they are of free, financially and sexually liberated women.

sarah984's review

informative lighthearted fast-paced

2.5

I thought this was an interesting concept, but it wound up being way too pop-history for me. Each chapter features a story about a specific woman (with varying levels of connection to alcohol culture, there were a couple extremely tenuous links that felt like "diversity hires" unfortunately) interspersed with buzzfeed listicle style writing about other things happening globally during that time period. The footnotes are not citations (there's a bibliography at the back, but specific facts aren't cited directly) they're just more unfunny "snark" and some of the chapters (especially the more modern years) feel uncomfortably preachy. Also acting like Hammurabi invented misogyny whole cloth is extremely silly.

The different types of alcohol and how they're made were interesting though.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol

Moderate: Alcoholism, Colonisation, Misogyny, Racism, and Rape

Minor: Pandemic/Epidemic

victoriapi909's review against another edition

funny informative inspiring reflective relaxing medium-paced

4.5

I loved this book! It’s super informative and chock-full of interesting pieces of women’s history that I was unaware of before! I enjoyed the casual tone of this book because it helped make the information more digestible. I would recommend this if you are also fascinated by the history of alcohol.

gmc16's review against another edition

informative inspiring lighthearted slow-paced

4.0

melannrosenthal's review against another edition

funny informative lighthearted reflective slow-paced

4.5