Cafés

Tuesday

Ian Sansom

Is coffee-drinking the new secular religion?

From our UK edition

A lot of books, obviously depending on what mood you’re in and viewed from a certain angle, slantwise or squintlike, hover on the edge of self-parody: the Bible; poetry, particularly if American; pretty much everything on a Booker shortlist; Wittgenstein’s Tractatus; Ottolenghi’s cookbooks. Like most things, the best approach to books is to view them with a mixture of open-minded curiosity and outright hostility – is this thing actually profound, useful, interesting or an irritating waste of time and money, a bit of a joke, offensive, crass or just stupid and worth avoiding at all costs?

Tuesday

Loyd Grossman

How to café hop like a Parisian

You will be familiar with the 1930s line, “Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun.” Whenever I hear the word culture I reach for the nearest restaurant. Culture makes me hungry and there is no better place to post-mortemize the latest exhibition or concert than from a comfortable seat in a local joint. For 19th-century progressives, railway stations were the most in-your-face examples of a new and better world. “The railway station is the highest monumental and artistic expression of the industrial and commercial genius which so specially characterizes the era in which we live,” César Daly proclaimed in 1861.

Café