Acquired Tastes

The next installment in my Peter Malye casual re-read, Acquired Tastes is a collection of essays Mayle wrote in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  He covers, well, acquired tastes - expensive yet visible items most of us would partake of if only we could afford it (or have an expense account allowing us to explore them).  Truffles, custom-fit clothing, cashmere, champagne, and limousines get their day along with the less pleasant expenses of house guests, lawyers, and tipping.   It's a bit more "guy" oriented than I remember it (I can assure you that I covet cashmere sweaters as much as any man - or more so, since I don't have a shirt coming between the exquisite softness and my arms and torso), and the numbers are a bit off thanks to the inflation of twenty-five years.  Like most of Mayle's work, it's aspirational, leaving the reader wanting a custom-made suit, hand-made shoes, and a five-star dinner date as an excuse to wear them.