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Perfumes: The Guide | 
 enlarge | Authors: Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £20.00
Buy New: £9.00
You Save: £11.00 (55%)
New (14) Used (7) from £6.62
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 273
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 5.7 x 1.5
ISBN: 1846681022
EAN: 9781846681028
ASIN: 1846681022
Publication Date: September 11, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
My book of the year January 4, 2009
Just superb, witty and informative. It's given me a new hobby of dashing to perfume counters at every opportunity just to try out new fragrances. The only downside is that as the perfume industry moves so quickly, there are already new perfumes out there that are not listed. I'd buy an updated one every few years if only the authors were to produce one!
 Fabulous book, inadequate index. January 4, 2009
But for the index I'd have given this book far more than five stars, if they'd been available as it's an absolute Joy - and no more puns, I promise. Every home really should have a copy of this.
Now, authors please note for the second edition, what we all need are:
An index of perfumiers (Have I got the right word?) so that you can turn immediately to Chanel or whoever and quickly find the winners and losers they provide.
Perfumes indexed by type - much harder this; LT & TS would probably need to choose a shortlist of basic types such as chypre, floral, citrus etc. and then head each perfume something along the lines of 'Love in Paris - floral (peachy)' so that it can more easily be classified. There will always be some perfumes which are e.g. equally floral and citrussy - no problem, they'll be listed under both headings.
...and I really do think this is one of the best books I've bought for ages. I'm only bothering to write this review because I think the book deserves to be as perfect as some of the products it describes.
Fall in love with fragrance delivered with wit December 29, 2008
I've never quite tipped over from perfume lover to perfume fanatic but this fascinating book could be the tipping point!
Both writers know their stuff but what makes this such an engaging read is their wit and their passion for perfume, which is highly addictive. I've been haunting the department stores (braving Christmas time crowds!) to try out the rave review items, I gathered all my perfumes together for a review and to follow the move from top note through to `dry down', I have so many bookmarks in my copy that it's bristling with paper. Luca Turin is a biophysicist who makes molecules for the perfume industry (who knew!). He is extremely knowledgeable and erudite and embellishes his descriptions with references to books, films and music - it's a sensory experience to read his critiques and you feel you are learning about perfume. Tania Sanchez is a sharp-witted blogger with a lust for perfume - she is very much the junior partner but provides some street cred. The pair met when Sanchez commented on Turin's well known perfume blog and have since married after collaborating on the book.
My only issues with it are i) there is that there is little indication of price in the book - except occasionally when they say that something is cheap or expensive so the danger is that you can fall in love with the description of a perfume and then find it is way out of your price range and ii) the 1500 perfumes are entered in alphabetical order by name but then not indexed or grouped by maker. These are small points but would make the browsing when out much easier.
I'm grateful to the guide for pointing me at trying fragrances that perfume snobbery would have kept me from trying - eg Estee Lauder and Tommy Girl and for exploding some myths.
A couple of examples from the pens of Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez:
Danielle Steel Danielle - `As Slim Pickens says in Dr Strangelove ` A guy could have a pretty good time in Vegas with this!' The fragrance is not all that bad. To be sure, it is a sour pinched floral in the current manner and feels like the formula is only a few bucks away from being cheap enough for wall-socket air care, but is has a weird papaya-like overripe twist in it that saves it from instant oblivion.'
Beyond Paradise Men `'Wear it, and after a few hours you will find your daily life suffused by the same feeling of peace you get when you settle into an armchair after tidying your flat from end to end. All other masculines (and most feminines) will seem loud, coarse and bare by comparison. Its composer Calice Becker has miraculously found a way to suspend perfume time, and bottle a never-ending dawn such as Concorde pilots used to see when flying westwards, racing with the sun. LT
Ormonde Jayne Champaca `is a handsome, well-built fragrance in a square shoulders eighties style, compellingly botanical and synthetic in what feels equal parts, giving a soft, slightly buttery floral a backbone of amber and a pleasantly rich, green woody herbal aura....'TS
Muscs Koublai Khan (Serge Lutens) **** beastly musk
No other perfume musk comes close to this potent animalic antidote to the laundered age, not even the obsolete and unavailable natural musk tincture. Back before I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb, I reviewed Muscs Koublai Khan as "the armpit of a camel driver who has not been near running water in a week." The scent is the same but my horror is gone. The fragrance turns out to be a lost-world fantasy of firelit palaces, with the soupy, sleepy warmth of two beneath a quilt....TS
I am now teetering on the edge of obsession but I smell nice...
A splendid book October 31, 2008
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
This book is hugely readable. I bought it really out of curiosity - could anyone really write about perfume, surely you would need to sample them to appreciate their qualities? Not so. This is written so well, you can really get a feel for the product, the descriptions of the perfumes that I do know are so accurate, and actually make me appreciate all the complexities in them. Very witty, with some laugh-out-loud moments, I read this in two sittings and turned back immediately to start again. This is the next best thing to having a perfumery in your living room , without the hovering assistants. I read this on holiday in France, and on the ferry home took it into the onboard shop, reading, spraying & sniffing to the puzzlement of some passengers. I tried perfumes that I would have normally ignored, recognized the levels and descriptions from the book in each of them. A beautiful book, one you could read again & again. I do highly recommend this, it would make a great present for your best friends, male and female.
Refreshing honesty and splendid wit September 27, 2008
27 out of 28 found this review helpful
Quite apart from its sheer range and depth in tackling its subject, this book is really entertaining. It blows a welcome blast of fresh air through the fragrance business, exposing some of its frailties ('We *never* change our fragrance formulas' is the lie you hear most often) and gambolling in the glittering light of enthusiasm when reviewing favoured scents. The fragrance reviews are splendidly opinionated, but it's always clear that what's being praised is quality, coherence, balance, rather than 'niceness', so you're still free to exercise your own preference when you're shopping. I'm particularly impressed by the authors' recognition of the part appearance and presentation play in our enjoyment of fragrance, so they tell you when the packaging is the best thing about a scent, and when the opposite is true, too. They're also very good at pointing out that where fragrance is concerned, you very rarely 'get what you pay for', because some of the cheapest products on sale are very good, and some of the most expensive are not. Even if you fall into the least favoured category of person - someone who wears fragrance because they're frightened of smelling of themselves, rather than because they actually like what they're wearing - you'll find constructive suggestions here, with splendidly direct warnings about pitfalls you might want to avoid. A splendid read, and a reliable guide - which will need updating with new editions every few years!
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