book data
136 ratings,
3.80
average rating, 46 reviews
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published
May 13th 2008
by Bloomsbury USA
binding
Hardcover, 224 pages
isbn
1596915285
(isbn13: 9781596915282)
description
A gift for anyone who loves good liquor and high-proof prose: a collection of hilarious and deeply informed writings about drink from one of the all-t...more
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| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100+ Book Challenge: koralute's books of 2009 | 5 | 118 | 05/22/2009 06:51PM | |
| Hangovers | 1 | 13 | 05/22/2008 09:04AM |
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avg 3.80
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
recommends it for:
alcoholics, high-functioning alcoholics, drunks, alcophiliacs, the curious
This cute recollection of Kingsley Amis' newspaper columns on the life of a professional drunk is edited by Christopher Hitchens (friend of son Martin and resident avatar of English alcoholism in American letters). The writing is gin-saturated -- themes recurring in their wet wit seem half-remembered; the prose seems dictated, with the loose, conversational imprecision of a drunk and self-satisfied autodidact. But what else would you want, let alone expect, from a collection of brief High Engli...more
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let's allow a great 20th century dandy and wit to review this book better than i ever could...
Here is a story about a sinner,
He used to be a winner, who enjoyed a life of prominence and position.
But the pressures at the office and his socialite engagements,
And his selfish wife's fanatical ambition,
It turned him to the booze,
And he got mixed up with a floosie
And she led him to a life of indecision.
The floosie made him spend his dough
She...more
Here is a story about a sinner,
He used to be a winner, who enjoyed a life of prominence and position.
But the pressures at the office and his socialite engagements,
And his selfish wife's fanatical ambition,
It turned him to the booze,
And he got mixed up with a floosie
And she led him to a life of indecision.
The floosie made him spend his dough
She...more
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13 comments
Read in November, 2008
Had I been sentient (and British) during the 1970s, I'm sure I would have been a huge admirer of Amis's weekly newspaper musings on the art and science of drinking. I can definitely see how the constituent parts of this book would work well as columns.
But they fall flat in the anthology format, in large part because Amis is so darn repetitious. We hear the same bon mots re: Scotch time and again, for example. And the first third of the book contains nothing save for wittily phrased d...more
But they fall flat in the anthology format, in large part because Amis is so darn repetitious. We hear the same bon mots re: Scotch time and again, for example. And the first third of the book contains nothing save for wittily phrased d...more
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I truly believe you need only two drinks books in your life: one that tells you about every drink you could possibly make, and one that tells you about what you would want to drink. The first is useful in the case that an honored guest asks for a Detroit Motor City or something (I live in fear of moments like this); the second, while narrower in scope, is infinitely more practical because everything in it is actually good.
Everyday Drinking has captured a permanent spot as my second...more
Everyday Drinking has captured a permanent spot as my second...more
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Read in June, 2008
Read the STOP SMILING review of Everyday Drinking:
Like Death, the Hangover has regretfully confounded the scientific community in its efforts to develop a satisfactory cure. This fact has not stopped thousands of amateurs from prescribing imaginative remedies, suggesting that hangovers remain less an evil to be vanquished than a fruitful topic of conversation among quaffers, given that they can in fact be avoided simply by not drinking too much.
The subject has likely neve...more
Like Death, the Hangover has regretfully confounded the scientific community in its efforts to develop a satisfactory cure. This fact has not stopped thousands of amateurs from prescribing imaginative remedies, suggesting that hangovers remain less an evil to be vanquished than a fruitful topic of conversation among quaffers, given that they can in fact be avoided simply by not drinking too much.
The subject has likely neve...more
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Read in June, 2009
recommended to Iris by:
NYT Book Reviewrecommends it for: bloggers (for a lesson in brevity), alcoholophiles
This book compiles Kingsley's Saturday morning newspaper columns, which tread and re-tread about three topics, delightful in small doses:
- the art of being a miser who nevertheless gives his guests the impression of being a delightful host (groaning and procrastinating when anyone asks for a drink involving good booze, floating a teaspoon of gin atop tonic water, instead of mixing a true gin-tonic, etc.)
- the hangover
- the tiresomeness of wine, with short guides to choosi...more
- the art of being a miser who nevertheless gives his guests the impression of being a delightful host (groaning and procrastinating when anyone asks for a drink involving good booze, floating a teaspoon of gin atop tonic water, instead of mixing a true gin-tonic, etc.)
- the hangover
- the tiresomeness of wine, with short guides to choosi...more
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Read in February, 2009
This is a reprint of three of Kingsley Amis's classic gin-soaked volumes: On Drink, How's Your Glass (a quiz book), and Every Day Drinking (a title that boy Martin found clever if not hilarious, and which remains a source of confusion here on GoodReads [as it's apparently merged with this here collection:]).
Amis appears here in three boozy guises: mixologist, advice columnist, and know-it-all. All are witty and fascinating -- even when he's phoning it in, his prose is taut and immac...more
Amis appears here in three boozy guises: mixologist, advice columnist, and know-it-all. All are witty and fascinating -- even when he's phoning it in, his prose is taut and immac...more
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03/09/08
R.
marked it as to-read
With an introduction by The Hitch. (Customers who bought this item also bought - unsurprisingly - Amy Winehouse's Back to Black). There is, supposedly, a recipe for a bloody mary in here that incorporates ketchup...
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2 comments
This book is great when youre hungover, when youre fixing a drink, and after youve had too many. I love the insertion of his arbitrary General Principles about booze and guests. hilarious.
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No doubt due to the vaguely illicit nature, there are far more good books about eating than there are about drinking. So I was quite happy to stumble upon Kingsley Amis's Everyday Drinking at the library. It's not everyday that we get musings on drinking by major literary figures. It reads like a serious, if still funny, version of Modern Drunkard. This is the sort of book you flip through and immediately fall upon a gem, like his description of the metaphysical hangover, which I quote below:
...more
...more
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Read in September, 2008
It is probably my tee-totalling upbringing that makes Kingsley Amis' drinking book so appealing to me, because it is an adventure in another world. Amis wrote about drinking in the 70s and in England, so it really is another world. Good wine largely came from France and the drinking lunch was common, not the sign of a problem. But some things do remain the same and as Amis admits he is much more of a beer and especially a spirits man, his advice there (and drink recipes) are less constrained ...more
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Read in August, 2008
I saw a review of this and thought I'd give it a shot. I'd heard of Amis, but had never ready anything he'd written.
This book is really three books in one, being made up of books and essays he wrote between 1971 and 1984. The NYT review I read strongly suggested reading this in bits and pieces, and I can see how a book like this should be sipped and savored. But I don't read that way (and God help me if stop drinking that way), so I consumed this rather more quickly than I should hav...more
This book is really three books in one, being made up of books and essays he wrote between 1971 and 1984. The NYT review I read strongly suggested reading this in bits and pieces, and I can see how a book like this should be sipped and savored. But I don't read that way (and God help me if stop drinking that way), so I consumed this rather more quickly than I should hav...more
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Read in January, 2009
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.
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Read in January, 2009
I enjoyed this book b/c I enjoy his writing style, though he does repeat himself as regards recipes, facts, and opinions. The reason I didn't give it 4 stars is b/c the last section of the book is quiz questions and answers, but it's not set up like: quiz then answer. It's about 50 pages of quiz and then the same of answers. It was a pain to have to flip back and forth. All of this makes it seem like a big book when it's really not got that much in it.
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Read in November, 2008
Replete with unabashed opinion and peppered with wickedly worded truisms, this is the sort of food and drink writing that generally grabs me the right way. A collection of his books and essays, there are times when this gets a bit repetitive, and the age of some of them show at times.
But still, there is no way to resist a book that features delightfully scathing comments like this (regarding "the atrocity of the Pina Colada"): "Just the thing for a little 95-IQ female,...more
But still, there is no way to resist a book that features delightfully scathing comments like this (regarding "the atrocity of the Pina Colada"): "Just the thing for a little 95-IQ female,...more
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Read in July, 2008
A very nice birthday present from Jordan! The first half of the book is a hilarious manual on how to spend your life drunk. I couldn't wait to get started. Amis's technical knowledge, especially when it comes to spirits and mixed drinks, is impressive. Also his ability to avoid bullshit.
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To read this book is to see a true view of drinking. Drinking in America became a dirty secret in the eighties. I remember a teacher telling me that if you got drunk at all you were an alcoholic, which is ridiculous.
Kingsley Amis loves drinking and writes about it with wit and clarity. His ideas on the metaphysical hangover are brilliant. They are small depressions and by plunging yourself fully into them, you can purge yourself. He even gives a list of poetry and music to listen to ...more
Kingsley Amis loves drinking and writes about it with wit and clarity. His ideas on the metaphysical hangover are brilliant. They are small depressions and by plunging yourself fully into them, you can purge yourself. He even gives a list of poetry and music to listen to ...more
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What I've learned so far: Kingsley Amis drank. A lot. Perhaps every day, I'm not sure. That, and he has his tongue strongly in his cheek for much of the book. So far, it's been an amusing read - we'll see how things go in the last half of the book.
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A delightful and hilarious collection of essays extolling the drinking arts for inebriates of every kind. Amis will make you a smarter lush and for those with more temperate natures you too will be intoxicated by his wit and alcoholic erudition.
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Fizzy, delightful cocktail of Amis Sr's informed and opinionated views on drink. Makes one want to sample the distiller's art forthwith. My review of the book is at www.antiblurbs.blogspot.com
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