I may have to buy this book...

[telophase]

I added a bunch of samples to my Kindle and an slowly going through them, deciding whether or not to buy the books for the trip. I mmmight have to get this one:

It is a mistake to think that the overwhelming reason for women to wear perfume is to attract the opposite sex. But as Luca once explained to me regarding the peculiar, temperature-independent scanty dress of many young women at night, what a woman on the prowl requires is something that men will register after six beers. Thus the use of simplified sexual cues, such as short skirts and big hair, and perhaps also a loud, sweet, pervasive perfume that will cut through a fog of spilled liquor, end-of-day body odor, the occasional vomit on the bar floor, and the perfumes of the nearest five girls, dressed identically. Of course, if your mating strategy casts this wide a net, you may drag in more old boots than big tunas. But that is probably fodder for another book.

Perhaps this attention-getting olfactive strategy can also, in a way, explain the second mistake, milder than the first but still quite wrong, that women tend to make when choosing a fragrance, which is to assume that the reason to wear perfume is to impersonate a flower bed. This is a very fine strategy if your aim is to attract bees.

Also: I found a YA series with two books up on NetGalley. One in which an anorexic girl becomes Famine, and one in which a girl who cuts becomes Rage. Yes, two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Comments

[yhlee]

Okay, that perfume excerpt is fantastic, so what is the book? :-)

[telophase]

Perfumes: the A-Z Guide, by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, amusingly enough. I have no idea how much of it is amusing text and how much is just lists of perfumes or something, but I'm willing to chance it for more text like that!

ETA: I forgot that the Publishers Weekly review was what made me download the sample:

Starred Review. Less a guide in the sense of helping people choose the perfect fragrance than a wide-ranging, critical review of some 1,200 perfumes, both famous and obscure, this comprehensive book is unfailingly entertaining. A collaboration between Turin, a well-known olfactory scientist, and Sanchez, a perfume collector and critic, the book brings their exquisite connoisseurship to life in a contagious manner. Their passion for a few scents and their outrage at the others' failings make for entry after entry of hilarious, catty comments interspersed with occasional erudite, eloquent disquisitions. French perfumery Guerlain is subject to both: Jicky is an object lesson in perfumery... a towering masterpiece, while Aqua Allegoria Pivoine Magnifica is like chewing tin foil while staring at a welding arc. Other startlingly evocative metaphors abound, especially those comparing perfumes to people, whether someone real (Amy Winehouse, Paris Hilton) or a general type (socialites, someone ill with bronchitis). This will be a must-have for anyone who already loves perfumes, though many of the reviews will cause violent disagreement, and those who aren't utterly perfume-obsessed will still appreciate the opening essays on olfactory science, the history of perfume, general types of fragrances and how to choose perfumes.

[brigdh]

Ha, I also downloaded the one with the anorexic girl is Famine (though I haven't read it yet), but I hadn't realized there was a sequel out! Awesome.

[telophase]

I usually don't care for Problem Novels, but with a setup like that, how could I not?

[movingfinger]

From the extract, I assumed that was another werewolf book.

[vito_excalibur]

I've got to get this book.

[rydra_wong]

I REC THAT BOOK SO HARD.

I have no idea how much of it is amusing text and how much is just lists of perfumes or something, but I'm willing to chance it for more text like that!

It's all amusing text! Okay, I think there are two or three pages of lists at the back, but otherwise it's all text.

There are a few essays on various aspects of perfume, then an alphabetical sets of entries on hundreds and hundreds of scents.

Which sounds far less entertaining than it is; the two authors are wildly opinionated and utterly devoid of mercy. They spare no snark when it comes to perfumes they hate or are bored by -- and then they write marvellous lyrical analyses of exactly what makes a particular perfume a work of genius.

So much fun.

[telophase]

AWESOME.

It's going on the to-buy list, then! Thanks!

[cynthia1960]

That book is indeed made of awesome and sweet-smelling win.