Midcentury Cocktails: History, Lore, and Recipes from America's Atomic Age by Cecelia Tichy -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Do you collect books on any particular subject -- gardening, outer space, sports, whatever?

I have a middling-sized collection of books about cocktails. They aren't all recipe books, although some are. They are books about cocktails culture and history, bartending guides, recipe books, books about entertaining with cocktails, and a couple of books about writers who enjoyed their cocktails, sometimes too much. I have a new one to share today on Book Beginnings on Fridays. 

Please share the opening sentence (or so) from the book you are reading this week. Or share froM a book that caught your eye.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

America at midcentury was a nation on the move, taking to wings and wheels along the new interstate highways and in passenger jets that soared to thirty thousand feet above the earth.

-- from Midcentury Cocktails: History, Lore, and Recipes from America's Atomic Age by Cecelia Tichy. 

This new book explores icons of midcentury American life -- such as commuter trains, tiki bars, suburban weekends, Playboy bunnies, bachelor pads, and Breakfast at Tiffany's -- and examines how they influenced and were influenced by cocktail drinking. After each chapter, there are recipes for related cocktails. 

The recipes are pretty simple because midcentury was the heyday of straightforward cocktails. Goofy early experiments had died off (for good reason) and today's crazy, anything goes cocktails had yet to be imagined. So there are several recipes in here that are not much more than put "very clear" ice cubes in an Old Fashioned glass, add 1 - 2 ounces of whatever liquor, and maybe stir in 4 ounces of soda water (the "recipe" for Scotch & Soda, for example). That's fine by me, since I live in a house where we consider ice a mixer. 

There are other recipes more elaborate, even frou-frou, especially in the tiki bar chapter. Those can be fun too, just not really my thing. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please leave the link to your Book Beginnings on Fridays post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts another teaser event on Fridays. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book they are reading -- or from 56% of the way through the audiobook or ebook. Please visit Freda's Voice for details and to leave a link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Midcentury Cocktails:

Page 56 has recipes, so here's one from the chapter on weekends in the suburbs: 

NEW YORK SOUR

    Ingredients:

1. 2 oz blended whiskey
2. Chilled dry red wine
3. 1/2 ounce lemon juice
4. 1 teaspoon sugar
5. 1/2 slice lemon

    Directions:

1. Put ample ice in shaker.
2. Vigorously shake whiskey, lemon juice, and sugar.
3. Strain into 6-ounce sour glass.
4. Fill glass with red wine.
5. Stir, garnish with lemon slice, and serve.

What do you think? Would you try it?

Book Review: Of All the Gin Joints

Of All the Gin Joints: Stumbling through Hollywood History

by Mark Bailey, illustrated by Edward Hemingway, published by Algonquin Books.

A terrific companion to their Bartending Guide to Great American Writers, Of All the Gin Joints focuses on the drinking careers of Hollywood's famous dipsomaniacs. Beginning with the era of silent movies through the "New Hollywood" of the 1960s and 70s, Bailey presents an alcoholic history of Hollywood illustrated by Edward Hemingway.

Each chapter focuses on a star of the silver screen and includes a brief biography followed by a drinking-related anecdote and a recipe for a favorite cocktail. Most chapters include a description of a famous Hollywood watering hole and amusing stories related to specific movies are interspersed throughout.

Of All the Gin Joints would make a perfect gift for the movie or cocktail buffs on your list.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

Book Beginning: Cocktails for Book Lovers

THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book  Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



MY BOOK BEGINNING

Growing up in England, I was obsessed with Virginia Woolf – her luminous prose, her melancholy brilliance – and the glamorous image of the Bloomsbury set, a famous group of London intellectuals and writers in the early 1900s.

Book Girl's Guide to Cocktails for Book Lovers by Tessa Smith McGovern, published by sourcebooks. I love books. I love cocktails. Perfect!

Cocktails for Book Lovers offers 50 recipes straight from the pages of, or at least suggested by, famous authors and their books. The recipes range from classics, like William Faulkner's favorite Mint Julep, to the imaginative, like a "Sherry Alexander" inspired by Thrity Umrigar.

And on top of all that, the publisher is hosting some fun giveaways:

Kitchen Remodel, Week Four: Canopy & Cocktails

Drywall is boring. Glad as I am to see walls in the new kitchen, there is nothing exciting about drywall. And drywall was the only thing that happened in our new kitchen this week.

Outside, we saw the beginning of a long-awaited canopy over the back door. It still needs its trim and the little copper roof like on the roof of the adjacent bump out. 

But already I can imagine finally having a stoop to set down the groceries with the canopy to keep off the rain -- instead of the meager concrete steps exposed to Portland's unfriendly weather that we've lived with for five years.

The stoop will connect with a concrete terrace on top of the garage, so I've also been daydreaming about warm summer evenings with the grill going and neighbors over.  The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto by Bernard DeVoto has me ready to start those evenings observing the sacred cocktail hour, the "pause in the day's occupation" that "marks the lifeward turn."




DeVoto wrote history books, novels, a magazine column for Harper's and this delightful homage to the cocktail hour.  First published in 1948, my edition is a reprint from Tin House with an introduction by Daniel Handler.

Written in a style Handler describes as "deadpan fascism," The Hour extols the virtues of the only two drinks DeVoto accepts as cocktails -- a "slug of whiskey" and a dry gin martini.  DeVoto advocates two of either at 6:00 o'clock with a few friends in a quiet setting as a necessary segue between the labors of the day and dinner.

He makes a good case.  And his pillorying of anything that falls outside his defined cocktail rituals is still very funny, even with his Dorris Day-era views on women.  His diatribe against rum, grenadine, mixers, anything sweet, olives, and novelty bar ware is a masterpiece of curmudgeonly eloquence.

NOTES

I read The Hour as one of my choices for the Foodies Read Challenge and as one of my non-fiction books for the TBR challenges I am doing this year.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

This is the season for sales -- garage, rummage, yard, tag, etc. All are opportunities to add to my ever-expanding library, and I took advantage of several last week, ending up with a mishmash of reading goodies.



The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst (French spies in Poland on the eve of WWII)



The Perfect Martini Book by Bob Herzbrun (history and anecdotes of the king of cocktails, with only a few variations but lots of illustrations)



The Black Mountain and Might As Well Be Dead by Rex Stout (I am working my way through all the Nero Wolfe novels)



Kate Vaiden by Reynolds Price (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award)



The Michael Innes Treasury by Michael Innes (more vintage mysteries in an omnibus edition containing The Case of the Journeying Boy, Hamlet, Revenge!, and Appleby's End)



Variety of Men by C.P. Snow (biographical essays on famous men from the author of the Strangers and Brothers series)

Cocktail of the Day: The Lucky Jim

Sort of in the spirit (so to speak) of my goal of making one new recipe from every cookbook, I also like to try new cocktail recipes.

Kingsley Amis offered several choices in Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, but the one that appealed to me the most was for a cocktail of his own invention that he called the Lucky Jim after his most famous character.

Essentially, the Lucky Jim is a vodka martini with a splash of cucumber juice. Amis provided proportions for making a pitcher of the drink, but who makes an entire pitcher of martinis these days? To make just a single drink, make a dry vodka martini, adding approximately twice as much cucumber juice as vermouth. We are only talking about a very small amount of cucumber juice.

But where to get cucumber juice? Amis suggests peeling a cucumber, chopping it in approximately two-inch lengths, and squeezing it in a lemon juicer. I think he meant an old-fashioned lemon reamer, but I put it in my modern squeezer kind and it worked fine. Then strain the juice to remove the seeds. I forgot this step and the sticky seeds stuck to the side of my martini glass in an unappealingly gooey way.

Garnish with a thin slice of cucumber with the peel on.

The drink is a little bit cloudy, with an almost imperceptible green ting and a refreshing hint of cucumber. Definitely worth a second round.

Cheers!

Review of the Day: Everyday Drinking

Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amisis a compendium of Kingsley Amis’s previously published “dipsography”: On Drink, Every Day Drinking, and How’s Your Glass? Amis was well known both on the page and off as a drinking man, so was uniquely qualified to tackle his subject.

On Drink was first published in 1972 as a stand-alone book. It is the best of the collected bunch, as Amis is fresh and on his game, often snarky, always opinionated. He covers beer, wine, spirits, general principals of drinking, drinking literature, tips for hosts, hangovers, and drinks recipes. Chapters on “The Mean Sod’s Guide” to being a stingy host and how to sooth a "metaphorical" hangover are fiercely entertaining.

Every Day Drinking is a collection of articles Amis wrote in the early 1980s on the same booze-related topics, many of them re-workings of chapters from On Drink. Despite the Editor’s argument Amis’s second takes are like enjoying a Laphroig after a Glenfiddich , several of these essays are more like the warm half of a large martini.

How’s Your Glass? is the oddest of the bunch. Again a collection of articles from the early 1980s, these take the form of a series quizzes on wine, beer, and hard liquor, with the answers printed further back. It is fine for what it is, although probably appeals to a limited audience.

Because the independent volumes are out of print and difficult to find, Everyday Drinking is a reasonable way to get On Drink into your library – a worthwhile purchase for those who prefer their drinking companions in printed form.

OTHER REVIEWS

(If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.)

Opening Sentence of the Day: Everyday Drinking

"Anthropologists assure us that wherever we find man he speaks."

-- On Drink

"There's a certain satisfaction to be got from bringing out a book of collected journalism."

-- Every Day Drinking

"Although drink is a contentious subject -- I have seen grown men close to blows over whether you should or should not bruise the mint in a Mint Julep -- there are a lot of facts connected with it, some well known, some less so, and some on the fringes which may have their own appeal."

-- How's Your Glass?

All by Kinglsley Amis, published as a compilation, Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis.

I didn't realize when I bought this book that it is a re-publication of three separate Amis books on alcohol and drinking -- what he might call his "dipsography," a word he uses in one of the essays. This was a pleasant surprise, because Amis is a favorite author of mine and I would like to read all his books, but the individual volumes are hard to come by. 


NOTE
Book Beginnings on Fridays is a Friday "opening sentence" event hosted by Becky at Page Turners.