Description:

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

Review

"These books are so delicious they impart a kind of contact high; they make you feel as if you’ve just had the first sip of the planet’s coldest, driest martini...A reminder of how good all of Amis’s writing was about being what he called a “drink-man”: smart, no-nonsense and, above all else, charming...you finish this book believing that [alcohol] added more to his life than it took away. [Everyday Drinking] deserves to be rediscovered.”—Dwight Garner_, New York Times_

"There has never been a more charming, erudite, eager, generous and devoted lover of drink--to judge by his writing--than Kingsley Amis_." __—The New York Times Book Review_

"With spirits, as with movies, there exists a breed of critic who both illuminates and entertains and, consequently, is worth reading. Kingsley Amis falls into that category — a great comic wit, Amis' writings (both fiction and non) about alcohol are among the very best." _—Washington Times_

"Back in print at last, Bloomsbury having gathered into one delightful volume under the title "Everyday Drinking" that's now hitting bookstore shelves. It is essential reading for any literate bibber." _—Wall Street Journal_

"It’s refreshing to see an artifact from a more hedonistic era....Amis’ quips and gripes about noisy pubs, vodka drinkers, wine snobs, teetotalers, and hangovers grow more delicious with age." __—Booklist

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"Among Amis’s literary output the journalism on drinking, recently collected and published with an introduction by (who else?) Christopher Hitchens, is in no way the least achievement because it is a reminder and a record of a culture that is incrementally slipping away....Like a bottle of Laphroaig, this book is full of good things, many of them familiar though others are more intriguing." _—New Humanist_

“Studded with hilarious observations and much good advice.” —Kyle Smith__