![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAll things may be impermanent, but some of the titles in the ebook lending service of my city library can be downright elusive. Noticing Tom Standage’s recent A Brief History of Motion in the catalogue made me think I’d be interested in reading it as soon as I’d finished the book I was then working my way through, but when that had happened the title wasn’t available any more. His earlier A History of the World in 6 Glasses was available instead, and then it wasn’t, and then it was. I managed to sign it out, only to notice it evaporate from the catalogue itself while my ebook was still signed out.
In any case, Standage’s book about six beverages and their links to specific phases of history was a light diversion, although The Victorian Internet still remains my personal pick for a title by him. I might have been a bit conscious of how I don’t drink the majority of potables he covered. Following the lead of my parents I’m just about a teetotaler, which left me just sort of nodding at beer (and the earliest civilizations), wine (and the Mediterranean world), and distilled spirits (and the transatlantic slave trade and American colonies). A certain awareness of cultural depictions of “people who can’t function in the morning without coffee” (distinct from Enlightenment coffeehouses, although Standage mentioned the stuff sold there might not have been freshly brewed) made me decide to go as long as I could before starting to drink that, and I still haven’t got that habit. I’ve very occasionally put a tea bag in hot water, although there I may be more familiar with “herbal teas” distinct from the genuine leaf (and the interplays between China, Britain, and India in the book) and “iced tea” that comes presweetened where I live. That does lead me to the sixth glass, Coca-Cola (and all the “globalization” packed into it). Although I wound up with a carbonated soft drink habit early, I do try to drink no more than one can a weekend day, and of late I’ve found the smaller cans more appealing, remembering how “regular cans” got larger all of a sudden from my earliest years.
The happenstance of “lactose tolerance lasting longer in certain populations familiar with dairy herds” didn’t get addressed in the book, although an afterword did deal with water itself making a comeback (while I accept the role of germ theory and municipal water played there). The ebook also included an author interview where Standage happened to mention “the gin panic” of the eighteenth century I’d read about in other books and then explained why it hadn’t been mentioned in his chapter on spirits. It could be that in the near future I’m not going to have as many chances to read library ebooks; closing with this title might have quenched a certain thirst for the moment.
In any case, Standage’s book about six beverages and their links to specific phases of history was a light diversion, although The Victorian Internet still remains my personal pick for a title by him. I might have been a bit conscious of how I don’t drink the majority of potables he covered. Following the lead of my parents I’m just about a teetotaler, which left me just sort of nodding at beer (and the earliest civilizations), wine (and the Mediterranean world), and distilled spirits (and the transatlantic slave trade and American colonies). A certain awareness of cultural depictions of “people who can’t function in the morning without coffee” (distinct from Enlightenment coffeehouses, although Standage mentioned the stuff sold there might not have been freshly brewed) made me decide to go as long as I could before starting to drink that, and I still haven’t got that habit. I’ve very occasionally put a tea bag in hot water, although there I may be more familiar with “herbal teas” distinct from the genuine leaf (and the interplays between China, Britain, and India in the book) and “iced tea” that comes presweetened where I live. That does lead me to the sixth glass, Coca-Cola (and all the “globalization” packed into it). Although I wound up with a carbonated soft drink habit early, I do try to drink no more than one can a weekend day, and of late I’ve found the smaller cans more appealing, remembering how “regular cans” got larger all of a sudden from my earliest years.
The happenstance of “lactose tolerance lasting longer in certain populations familiar with dairy herds” didn’t get addressed in the book, although an afterword did deal with water itself making a comeback (while I accept the role of germ theory and municipal water played there). The ebook also included an author interview where Standage happened to mention “the gin panic” of the eighteenth century I’d read about in other books and then explained why it hadn’t been mentioned in his chapter on spirits. It could be that in the near future I’m not going to have as many chances to read library ebooks; closing with this title might have quenched a certain thirst for the moment.