For globe-trotting British journalist Lyttelton, scent evokes memories. Such memories from her childhood, when she traveled with her archeologist mother to distant countries, led her to embark on a quest to find scent origins around the world. Seeking her own bespoke perfume, she visits a London perfumer, introducing readers to the delicate art of composing a perfume, evoking, for instance, a forest at dawn soaked in dew or, more abstractly, a piece of music. With her own formula in hand, Lyttelton sets out to visit places where the ingredients are grown, hoping to meet the harvesters, encounter fragrant fumes and discover the secrets of perfume making. Lyttelton has a magical manner of blending words and sentences to summon up splendiferous odors amid her anecdotes, memories and historical research. Scented sentences permeate the pages as she takes the reader along on her olfactory odyssey across far-flung, labyrinthine landscapes, from the French Riviera and Morocco to Tuscany and Sri Lanka. From the iris fields of Tuscany to the vetivert distilleries of India, from the nutmeg plantations of Sri Lanka to the shores of the Arabian Sea, Celia gives readers a glimpse into the world of scent that few people have ever experienced, providing delicious details on its place in history, for example, how Casanova added small amounts of ambergris to chocolate mousses to aid his amorous adventures, and how Charles Dickens carried a monogrammed pocket nutmeg grater in his waist coat at a time when nutmeg was used to ward off evil and to spice rum.
Her enchanting escapades conclude with a glossary of terminology used by perfumers.

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Excellent interesting looking read, can't wait to start this one. Thanks!!!

This travel book will be traveling to Canada as part of a Birthday Box. Enjoy!!

Interesting looking. Thanks!!!

My mom, AceofHearts, passed away from breast cancer in September, 2013. Aside from being one of the best people I know, she was an avid reader and took immense pleasure in Bookcrossing, her book club, and reading many great books. Unfortunately she didn't get around to reading this book.
We had similar tastes in books and would share them whenever we read something we enjoyed. This book sounds interesting so I'm going to keep it to read.

Celia has decided to get her own bespoke scent created for her (seemingly for the purpose of writing a book about it, rather than actually wanting this just for herself?). She visits someone that helps her pick out the top, middle, and base notes of her scent, including a colour consultation as colour and scent play roles together. After this, Celia sets out to find the origins of each of ingredient.

While staring this book, I wonder how Celia can keep me interested in her travels to learn about 11 different ingredients. It was interesting to learn about how these items are turned in to scents, and in some instances the massive volume of ingredient that is required to make a small volume of oil for scent. It makes you wonder how the finances work. While perfumes are not cheap, they aren't super expensive either compared to how much volume some of the ingredients require.

It's also hard to read a book on scent when you can't smell everything she's talking about. I don't recognize some of those ingredients and it would have been great to know what they smell like and what her final scent smells like. Celia tried describing what those smells were like, but many of them were unique to her like the smell of her childhood in some specific place. How can I associate with that? In general, that was my problem with this book. I couldn't connect with anything because I didn't know what the smells were and couldn't connect with her or her descriptions.

Thank you for this book, which has been on my wishlist for quite a few years. I love the beautiful cover, with the field of lavender, one of my favorite scent. It's a lovely present for my birthday! Thank you so much!!! And congrats again to the baby!