Perfumes The Guide 2018

I’ve never in my life written an Amazon review for anything. I was besotted by the first Perfumes the Guide, and am beside myself that this next installment is just as whip smart, honest, opinionated, intelligent, challenging, hilariously witty and viciously excoriating as the first. I am so happy right now. There is nothing more enjoyable than experts doing their thing, but very often expertise ends up meaning a gloss of pomposity - see art speak, some talk about chefs and their ‘journey’, movies that are all emperor’s new clothes, theatre performances where the texture of the seat in front of you is more interesting than any of the overheated gammon in the programme. These two are experts who bring their two wildly varying life experiences to inform the way they talk about smell (like dancing about architecture, only it WORKS) in the most exhilarating, elucidating and exciting way. I’d like to have some kind of badge or sticker to wear so other people who feel as passionately as I do about just how impressive their combined knowledge is and how very entertaining they make this art form would understand that they should talk to me IMMEDIATELY about how brilliant it is. The secret Luca-Tania hand gesture of an invisible spritz on the left wrist and an all-knowing sniff. Yes, I know, me too! It’s like a potted history of the world - polite and filthy, polished and raw, social life, pure sex, marketing, delusion, hope, chancerism, bold-faced lying, the sad diminution wrought by time, carelessness and capitalism, chemicals, storytelling, flowers, food, childhood memories, alien forms, history, the future, and magical talent. A Dickensian, sprawling, complicated, rewarding, beautiful clever and honest book. I couldn’t recommend it more highly. Loved every word.

Turin and Sanchez’s monumental book Perfumes: The A-Z Guide was profound, necessary, passionate and compelling. It stimulated an evolutionary leap in perfumery that changed the landscape and inspired hundreds of new perfumers to use their talent and imagination. It resulted in a world of beauty no one thought possible. It was so vivid, stylish, hilarious and technically good, even critics with little interest in perfume considered it one of the best books of the year. Perfumes The Guide 2018 is a different approach that covers all kinds of fragrances, but puts even more emphasis on niche and artisan perfumes. Like the first book, its substantial, extremely easy to read and highly entertaining, .but for many people this book is a great assist to those attempting to understand and define the genuinely worthwhile creations. Perfumery has changed radically. It's mind-blowing. Many of today's fragrances have to be smelled to be believed, and to generate context. The book focuses, not upon what is found at Neiman Marcus, (etc etc), with their corporate, mass consciousness, profit generating agendas, but rather the wave of perfumes that represent craftsmanship and art (as was centuries ago). That sometimes go to great lengths for the ingredients (and sometimes don't) to develop something of beauty. The pioneers, scientists, explorers, who are often more interested in what they can find, and combine, and present. At a time when so many people are simply looking to take your money, Perfumes The Guide 2018 is more relevant than ever. Luxury may have lost its luster, but this book will help you find the good stuff.

I am well familiar with the earlier edition (Perfumes: The A-Z Guide) and frequently reread snippets of it. The rave points: 1) all-new material. No rehashes of fragrances reviewed in the earlier edition. 2) enjoyable prose. I'm still not sure whether I enjoy the rhapsodies or the pans best, because each type of review is worth reading. 3) learning. Dr. Turin's understanding of perfume structure is pretty much beyond me (and I'm not sure I care all that much), but I always learn something from reading his comments. 4) discovering something new to smell. Several of the niche/independent companies mentioned in reviews in this edition were previously unknown to me, and I'm enjoying getting to know their fragrances. 5) entertaining. It's always fun to disagree with a review and snort loudly and disparage the authors' parentage, etc., while impatiently swiping the Kindle page. (Twilly gets 5 stars? PUHLEASE. It's a chemical disaster, with not only that flat chalky baby-aspirin orange note, but also the eye-stabbing lab-created jasmine thing completely overwhelming the ginger and tuberose.) The quibbles: 1) not nearly as comprehensive as I'd expected. I get it, this is all new, but there are frequently only a few fragrances reviewed from a prolific line. Samples of some lines mentioned are unobtainable by me in the U.S., even in this age of online orders. And some prominent indie/niche lines aren't reviewed at all. (I suspect, for example, that after Turin made a less-than glowing comment on his now-closed blog, Perfumes I Love, about the "natural" ingredients of Hiram Green fragrances, HG declined to have his scents included.) This kind of hit-or-miss inclusion does readers, particularly ones who'd like to use this guide as a "try this line" advisory, a minor injustice. 2) the balance of reviews written by co-authors seems off. I haven't counted, but a casual reading displays far fewer reviews written by Tania Sanchez than I'd expected, given the makeup of the earlier edition. Frankly, I miss seeing her writing and I feel that maybe the reviews are skewed toward one person's tastes rather than a mix of preferences. Which brings me to my third point. 3) personal preferences heavily influence ratings. Unavoidable, probably. All fragrance reviewers have preferences, and those tend to influence what they choose to review as well as the ratings. Even so, this volume seems far more skewed toward Turin's preferences than the earlier edition, and that in itself was fairly influenced. (For example, some really cutting reviews are reserved for scents that seem to have gotten his hopes up by referencing in their names a raw material he loves, such as iris or gardenia, and then turning out to not feature that material as prominently or as correctly as he'd hoped. I, on the other hand, could not possibly care less whether an Iris-This named perfume actually smells like iris butter or not, since I don't love that material, and I wish he'd quit having those knee-jerk reactions.) Even with the quibbles, I've enjoyed this Kindle ebook very much and will probably order the paper copy when it is released. The writing is still a delight.

Bardzo dobrze zabezpieczona przesyłka!

Nach dem ersten und erfolgreichen Parfüm-Führer ist das eine spätere Ergänzung. Ausschliesslich neue Parfüms und teils neuer Serviceteil hinten. Wer den ersten Teil gut fand findet hier alle Qualitäten wieder. Luca Turins phantasievolle Urteile, das Fehlen jeder Zweideutigkeit, der witzige Ductus. Ich liebe ihn einfach. Vorne drin ein paar Essays, auch von Tania Sanchez. Sie erweitern die Themen rund um das Parfum. Wen das interessiert, der braucht diesen Band!

I understand that the point of view of the writer is a very professional and an experienced one, but when talking about perfume (a very subjective matter), making mean reviews of perfumes that the writer do not like, is not educative at all for people that are interested in learning about perfumery. The shipping was good.

When you pick up a new book by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez and you discover that a review of a gardenia perfume begins with that familiar refrain of ‘Not gardenia’, you find yourself heaving a mightily stress-banishing sigh of relief, because you realise that, no matter how insane the world around you may seem, at least a few things can be relied upon to remain the same. In this case: the quality and honesty of Turin and Sanchez’s fragrance assessments. Those attributes come to the fore in Perfumes: The Guide 2018, their most far-reaching release since their rightly lauded and influential guide from 2009. The structure of this particular tome is not a departure from what has come before. At the beginning: a few excellent essays - including a characteristically thought-provoking appraisal of the current state of the industry - followed by FAQs. At the end: a glossary, indices and some Top Tens. And of course, in the middle, hundreds of juicy reviews of new and new-ish fragrance releases. In other words: business as usual. But that’s precisely why this release should be welcomed with scented arms. Ten years ago, the world of perfume criticism was a very different place. It needed the efforts of people like Turin and Sanchez to legitimise it and place it within the wider context of the work of creators and retailers. Nowadays, perfume reviewers are hardly a novelty. But their integrity is open to question. At a time when both social media and brands are conspiring to persuade follower-hungry ‘influencers’ (has there ever been a more asinine word?) to paste a gelatinous gloop of positivity over every single product, the value of criticism is in serious danger of being compromised. Turin and Sanchez have returned at just the right time to prove that truthfulness - no matter how subjective it may be - is always going to be more helpful and more constructive in the long run than some inane copy-pasting of a nonsensical press release. Of course, the precise contents of that truthfulness are up for discussion. Thank goodness! After all, that is the main purpose of criticism. On the one and only occasion - thus far - that I’ve met him, Turin said that one of his favourite books is James Carse’s Finite & Infinite Games, because it celebrates the unending pursuit of knowledge, the denial of all-conclusive answers, the refusal to bring the game to an end. Contrary to what some seem to think, his and Sanchez’s reviews are not an attempt to have the final say on their subject. If they’re written in a manner that appears to brook no further argument, that’s mainly a reflection of the craftsmanship of their authors. But in fact what they are is an invitation to further the debate: not on the level of some Insta-pouter, but of someone who’d like to make at least an attempt to treat the matter with a modicum of intelligence. So even though I don’t agree with all their reviews, I am so grateful to them for giving me the opportunity to consider and revise my own positions, as well as those of others. Perhaps some of their put-downs tip into the over-personal. Maybe their love of certain perfumers is a touch too unshakable. Possibly their continued use of star ratings is reductive. But that’s all up for debate. And how wonderful to be able to debate a feast as rich and multi-layered as this. Like a High Tea chat between the ghosts of Wilde and Wodehouse, their reviews gleam with wit, conciseness and, crucially, the ability to connect seemingly disparate dots. By and large, they are an utter joy to read. I’m concerned about the pair’s intention to release a new volume every year - I’d say part of their strength lies in viewing the scented scene from a less immediate vantage point - but I would certainly prefer to have an annual entry rather than none. Long may T&S keep writing. And giving us those ‘not gardenias’.

Es un libro de reseñas de perfumes muy entretenido. Los autores saben comunicar sin duda. Otra cosa es que las reseñas son subjetivas. En algunos casos no estoy de acuerdo en absoluto. Hay algunas obras que consideran maestras, que me hacen dudar de que tengan otros intereses. En cualquier caso una obligación para cualquier amante de los perfumes. Ojo está en inglés, y no hay traducción disponible!