{"id":2549,"date":"2018-03-04T17:10:41","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T01:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2549"},"modified":"2018-03-04T17:10:41","modified_gmt":"2018-03-05T01:10:41","slug":"review-the-rituals-of-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2549","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Rituals of Dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Rituals of Dinner<\/em> is the sort of charming book that feels like a palate cleanser between scholarly tomes.\u00a0 That is just a facade, though.\u00a0 Margaret Visser has crafted a soundly built exploration of our table manners that supports her elegant tableware.<\/p>\n<p>That said, <em>Rituals<\/em> abides in an odd niche.\u00a0 It&#8217;s scholarly, but not academic, informative but not authoritative, and traces the roots of ideas without being historical.\u00a0 In addition, Visser does not pretend to be unbiased.\u00a0 Her reasoned support for both the <a href=\"http:\/\/emilypost.com\">Emily Post<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.missmanners.com\/\">Miss Manners<\/a> traditions warms this etiquette nerd&#8217;s heart.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not an etiquette manual, either.<\/p>\n<p>It is an informed depiction of the range of behavior at the table focused on but not limited to American and European traditions.\u00a0 If you&#8217;ve ever wondered why knife etiquette involves where the weapon, er, utensil is pointed this is a book for you.\u00a0 Visser has spent many hours in the library.<\/p>\n<p>The erudition would fall flat under lesser writing.\u00a0 She hits an impossible tone with perfect pitch. Digressions are just long enough and deep enough.\u00a0 The main narrative moves along briskly.\u00a0 Her organization lends itself to spending a few hours or a few minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Strongly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rituals of Dinner is the sort of charming book that feels like a palate cleanser between scholarly tomes.\u00a0 That is just a facade, though.\u00a0 Margaret Visser has crafted a soundly built exploration of our table manners that supports her elegant tableware. That said, Rituals abides in an odd niche.\u00a0 It&#8217;s scholarly, but not academic, informative [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2551,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions\/2551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}