Drinking Diaries

On the third floor of the Strand the other night, women with streaks of gray in their hair, women with lavender cardigans, women who brought their husbands mingled cheerfully against a backdrop of richly hued books. They talked and smiled and looked at the other women. They huddled around a table with cheese and grapes, waiting for their pour of the wine.
This was a reading for a new book of essays, “Drinking Diaries,” all written by female authors and edited by Leah Odze Epstein and Caren Osten Gerszberg, who started a blog by that name in 2009. The event was billed as “an evening full of drink,” and it was, even if ... newyorker.