Coffee Books

Very powerful and unusually funny, K.M.Norris knows how to put things into poetry that the majority of us wouldn't. She does it with hunor and pure artistry. For those of you who love poetry it is a terrific read and a great addition to your library.

Herbert Gold has provided us with a history of Bohemia. He deals with Greenwich Village, San Francisco, Berkeley and any other place where the Bohemia mentality reigns supreme. This is a grand exploration of great artists, poets, thinkers, anarchists and dreamers. He presents the argument that Bohemia is ultimately a state of mind. You may be in Paris or Chapel Hill or Prague but you can descend into your own private Bohemia. There is discussion of the Beats and hippies, of course, but also of Paris in the twenties. He discusses Israeli bohemain Haim Hefer and French chanteur Serge Gainsbourg. ( I obtained a longtime fondness for Gainsbourg music from curiosity after reading this book. There are many unheralded madmen and women that get their fifteen minutes of fame in this book. It is a thrilling ride through a state of mind that ought to be more prevalent than it is. I felt excited to be alive after reading this book. The exaltation with life intensifies everytime I browse through this book. It goes well with ginseng tea, espresso, whiskey or beer. It is a great companion on bus rides and train ventures and it reads well on the beach. Herbert Gold finally gives due credit to the fine art of lazing around and dreaming away.

THE BOOK OF TEA is in every way a superlative volume! Rarely has a topic as seemingly simple as tea resulted in a more comprehensive and fascinating excursion into the history of the leaf, of the myths and legends surrounding the leaf, the manner in which tea evolved as a drink, as a commodity, as an instigator for battles, and as a means by which gentility is measured.

Authors Alain Stella, Gilles Brochard, Nadine Beautheac, and Catherine Dozel have joined to provide essays on every conceivable aspect of the art of tea drinking and the results are a compendium of the influence of this popular drink in every part of the world where partaken, grown, and appreciated. The writing is skilled, informative, laced with both humor and intrigue, and fills in a lot of spaces in world history that haven't been explained as well in most other history overviews.

Couple these fascinating essays and forays with a wealth of old photographs of tea services from the most basic of cultures to the most elegant of formal tea parties, with drawings and paintings and prints that focus on the growth and art of tea, and then top it off with a series of new photographs by Marc Walter of contemporary settings of tea as still life and as celebratory images of tea plantations to tea in pots and cups, and you get an idea of how extensive this book is. The design of the book (from Flammarion) is stunning. This is a fine art book as well as a most informative resource about one of the staples of our civilization. Highly Recommended! Grady Harp, march 06