Writing about perfume, and smells in general, is one of the greatest challenges for a journalist/author: how to evoke scents, with words…? But over the years, quite a few have done so very, very successfully. And if you want to build a ‘perfume bookshelf’, to deepen your knowledge of perfumery, start here…
We’ve awarded each title stars out of five, as a guide to which we think are the most important, and the all-round best reads. Nothing less than a three-star book is feataured here, though – so we reckon any of them are a worthwhile read.
As you become ever-more-obsessed (and we know how that feels), you may want to add to your collection – and of course, we’ll add to this section whenever new releases catch our eye…
We’d always prefer you support an independent bookstore rather than One-Clicking on Amazon – these indie stores can happily order most in-print books. However, in a super-busy world, we know it isn’t always practical. (And if you’re happy to buy secondhand – most titles are available via Amazon – this does often support smaller bookstores.)
Looking for out-of-print perfume titles in secondhand bookstores can be like searching for a needle in a haystack, meanwhile. If you’re in a hurry, we generally recommend abebooks.com, which links thousands of secondhand bookstores around the world, while Amazon can be a source for remaindered books…
Listening to Scent: An Olfactory Journey with Plants and their Extracts, by Jennifer Peace Rhind.
Like those of us at The Perfume Society, Jennifer Peace Rhind believes that the sense of smell can be cultivated and developed, and this book features exercises to help transform yours from the equivalent of a seven-stone weakling to an Ironman (or woman). Alongside sensory exercises, this 160-page volume explains how olfaction works, explores the odour families, looks at the language of scent, and the devotes the bulk of the book to identifying and exploring different smells – mostly via aromatherapy oils, as an alternative to fragrance ingredients from perfume houses. (Those are difficult for non-industry people to get their hands on.) There's a 'compare-and-contrast' approach that encourages you to smell different ingredients beside each other, to develop your olfactory memory bank and vocabulary. Great for anyone looking to create natural fragrances of their own, or as a textbook for those of us who are always keen to boost our smelling skills and expertise.
Scientist, perfume critic, author of The Secret of Scent and co-author of Perfumes: the A-Z Guide - a book that turned many thousands of readers into fragrance fanatics - Luca Turin is a busy man. Now we can read another of his creative outlets, collected together for the first time. Writing two widely admired columns for a distinguished Swiss magazine called NZZ Folio, Turin discussed all things sniff-able (from Blue Stratos to Mitsouko), even describing the smell of a particular Air France jet. In a section entitled "Either/Or" he acted as a kind of agony uncle for the indecisive - helping readers explore the rather peculiar merits of such subjects as heels vs. flats, trains vs. trams, or Captain Nemo vs. Captain Haddock. Yes, really! Every page has something to intrigue - always written in his inimitable and wryly humorous style no matter what the topic, it's absolutely full of passionately held opinions both aesthetic and scientific, and fully embracing culture high and low. Previously, the columns were only intermittently available in English, so this is not only the first time they have been gathered together en-masse, but also the first time many have been published in English at all. Including a foreword written by his wife and co-author of Perfumes: the A-Z Guide, Tania Sanchez; this is an invaluable and totally immersive experience for your e-book reader (now also available in paperback format).
