Is coffee-drinking the new secular religion?
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? The Book of Coffee by the philosopher Julian Baggini, with a foreword and afterword
