Everyday Drinking - Hardcover

Amis, Kingsley

3.77

1,413 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747599785 ISBN 13: 9780747599784

Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2008

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Kingsley Amis was one of the great masters of comic prose, and no subject was dearer to him than the art and practice of imbibing. This new volume brings together the best of his three out-of-print works on the subject: Kingsley Amis in Drink, Everyday Drinking and How's Your Glass? In one handsome package, the book covers a full shelf of the master's riotous and erudite thoughts on the drinking arts: Along with a series of well-tested recipes (including a cocktail called the Lucky Jim) are Amis's musings on The Hangover, The Boozing Man's Diet, The Mean Sod's Guide, and (presumably as a matter of speculation) How Not to Get Drunk - all leavened with fun quizzes on the making and drinking of alcohol all over the world. Mixing practical know-how and hilarious opinionation, this is a delightful cocktail of wry humour and distilled knowledge, served by one of our great gimlet wits.

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About the Author:

Born in London in 1922, Kingsley Amis was one of the best-loved British novelists of the twentieth century. He was the author of more than twenty novels, including the classic Lucky Jim, and a number of other works of criticism, poetry, and memoir. He was knighted in 1990, and died in 1995 at the age of seventy-three.

From Booklist:

The drinks revival is nearly complete—it’s now possible to be as insufferable about beer and spirits as about wine—but the revival seems to come with a warning label: enjoy the drinks, but don’t drink too much. In the face of that, it’s refreshing to see an artifact from a more hedonistic era: Amis knew the finer points of booze as well as anyone, but he never apologized for enjoying its effect, either. This reissue, appropriately introduced by Christopher Hitchens, collects Amis’ three drinks books: On Drink (1973), an indispensable primer; Every Day Drinking (1983), a browseworthy collection of newspaper columns; and How’s Your Glass? (1984), a dispensable collection of quizzes. Some of the advice is timeless—Amis, who could presumably afford better, advocated strategic deployment of cheap booze to save money—and some is not: liquor-store shelves look so different now that some passages are best read for historical perspective. But good humor never spoils, and Amis’ quips and gripes about noisy pubs, vodka drinkers, wine snobs, teetotalers, and hangovers grow more delicious with age. --Keir Graff

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