Sunday 19 July 2009

My Swedish book haul

You're probably not interested in this in the slightest. But here goes.

I manged to pick up a few books while in Stockholm. One new and four secondhand. Despite Andrew's chiding "You've already got enough books, dad." "You can never have enough books." "Yes you can, dad."

The city is pretty good for secondhand bookshops. And all the ones I tried had at least something about beer. Unlike the Akademiska Bokhandeln that just had air on the shelf marked "öl".

The new book, "Svensk Ölbok" by Örjan Westerlund, looks pretty handy. A bit on the history of Swedish beer and articles on every Swedish brewery. Two of the secondhand jobbies are just booklets. Though "Stockholms ölcafeer" has some good old photos of Stockholm pubs.

"För gott öls skull" ("For the sake of good beer") is more substantial. It's a collection of pieces by various writers on the topic of beer. "Jacobsen of Carlsberg" is an English translation of a Danish biography. It looks pretty academic. Hopefully it will contain something useful.

4 comments:

Andrew said...

Dad you spelt my name wrong!

Ron Pattinson said...

Andrew, why aren't you answering the phone?

I've fixed the spelling.

Andrew (not the son) said...

'Jacobsen of Carlsberg' is not bad but patchy in places giving too much detail in some areas and not enough in others. He also did a follow up on Carl Jacobsen called 'Beer and Marble'. Both are more about the Jacobsens and their public personas rather than the brewing as such.
Some of the best stuff about the early workings of the brewery trade are in the letters from The father to the son. Unfortunately those haven't been translated from the Danish.

Ron Pattinson said...

Andrew, thankfully I can read Danish so it doesn't really matter that much that the letters haven't been translated. I must see if I can find them.