{"id":532,"date":"2006-05-08T00:31:33","date_gmt":"2006-05-08T04:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/05\/08\/recommended-reading-man-walks-into-a-pub\/"},"modified":"2009-07-30T19:57:06","modified_gmt":"2009-07-30T23:57:06","slug":"recommended-reading-man-walks-into-a-pub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/08\/recommended-reading-man-walks-into-a-pub\/","title":{"rendered":"Recommended Reading: Man Walks Into A Pub"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Man<\/a>Well, this will be a dramatically different kind of book recommendation from the last one. (Although I guess there is a tenuous sequitor, since Jeff Ford has been known to enjoy a beer.)<\/em><\/p>\n

I also wanted to take a moment to recommend to everyone the book that is currently my downstairs bathroom book: Pete Brown’s Man Walks Into A Pub: A Sociable History Of Beer Drinking<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wow, is this a fun book. It is, as the title suggests, a history of beer drinking in Britain, and of all the things related thereto, specifically including the development of pub culture. It’s written in a breezy, discursive style that I find particularly readable, and I think I’ve been smiling at least once on most of the pages. There’s lots of footnoting and quoting (at least in the parts I read through so far) but this never makes things dry–indeed, quite a lot of the fun comes from seeing some of the quotes, or how Brown places their central ideas in the context of the ongoing flow of history.<\/p>\n

There is a web site dedicated to the book<\/a> where you will find a description of the book that includes this bit:<\/p>\n

It tells the history of beer and pubs in Britain; of beer’s hallowed roots as a gift from the gods to cheer us up, through to the last pint of Stella on a Friday night. And how the front room of a house with a big stick above the door evolved into gin palaces, working men’s clubs and gastropubs.<\/p>\n

It’s a story that features a whole host of unlikely characters, including an Egyptian Goddess, John Noakes, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a Canadian bloke who invented toasters, a couple of goats, Louis Pasteur, obsessive monks, a bear in a yellow nylon jacket, and some spitfires.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can also find, some pub jokes<\/a>, and many other things. My favourite thing about the web site is the truly epic list of words<\/a> that can be used to convey the concept of being drunk. The book listed 120 such words; the list at the site has… um… quite a lot more than that.<\/p>\n

If you want to see a few reviews, there’s one at the Guardian<\/a>, and another at the Gen X at 40 blog<\/a>. The later includes some comments that may force me to buy another beer history book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, this will be a dramatically different kind of book recommendation from the last one. (Although I guess there is a tenuous sequitor, since Jeff Ford has been known to enjoy a beer.) I also wanted to take a moment to recommend to everyone the book that is currently my downstairs bathroom book: Pete Brown’s Man Walks Into A Pub:… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-food-and-drink","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-8A","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2847,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions\/2847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}