Here are 75 books that Taking Tea with Mackintosh fans have personally recommended if you like
Taking Tea with Mackintosh.
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I fell into the world of tea by chance in the 1980s when I gave up a career in higher education to open a 1930s style tearoom in southwest London. I grew up in the 1950s in a typical British family that drank tea throughout the day but little did I know, as I baked endless supplies of scones and cakes for the tearoom at 4 am every day, that I would end up writing books and magazine articles, editing a tea magazine for the UK Tea Council, speaking at world tea conferences, training staff in hotels, travelling to almost every major tea producing country, and eventually working today as Director of Studies at the UK Tea Academy.
I dip into this must-have book all the time – for pleasure but also to learn and check facts. The four authors own the wonderful tea store, Camellia Sinensis in Montreal, Canada. They are extremely experienced in tasting and selecting teas from around the world for their business and just love sharing their infectious passion for tea and their extensive knowledge of the growing regions, growers, and manufacturers. As well as discussing the most important tea origins, they highlight some of the personalities and industry specialists they have met on their tea journey and whose insights help us understand the day-to-day work of tea gardens and factories. The book also includes invaluable advice on brewing and tasting tea, and the section on tea and gastronomy offers some absolutely stunning recipes for cooking with tea.
An updated edition of the "World's Best Tea Book" acclaimed by the 2014 World Tea Awards.
This widely praised bestseller has been updated to incorporate the changing tastes of tea drinkers, developments in production, the impact of climate change and an expanded and more highly developed tea market. This third edition improves Tea with this revised and extended content plus new photographs.
TeaTime Magazine called Tea "the reference work we've been waiting for", noting its value to students. Library Journal praised it as a "definitive guide to tea (that) will appeal to die-hard tea enthusiasts." Tea House Times found it…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I've spent the last three decades thinking about Japanese aesthetics, and in particular if and how they can be meaningfully used beyond Japan. I'm the author of several books on the subject: Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan, Place Time and Being in Japanese Architecture, This Here Now: Japanese Building and the Architecture of the Individual, and most recently, The Constructed Other: Japanese Architecture in the Western Mind. I teach about Asian Pacific architecture at the University of Hawai'i, Mānoa.
Okakura links Taoist and Zen philosophy to the tangible world by way of the aesthetics of tea, which are actually the aesthetics of life itself. The title of this slim volume is disarmingly understated, then. It is the most approachable book on aesthetics I know.
Now available in a gorgeous hardcover slipcase edition, this "object d'art" will be sure to add grace and elegance to tea shelves, coffee tables and bookshelves. A keepsake enjoyed by tea lovers for over a hundred years, The Book of Tea Classic Edition will enhance your enjoyment and understanding of the seemingly simple act of making and drinking tea.
In 1906 in turn-of-the-century Boston, a small, esoteric book about tea was written with the intention of being read aloud in the famous salon of Isabella Gardner, Boston's most notorious socialite. It was authored by Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese philosopher, art…
I fell into the world of tea by chance in the 1980s when I gave up a career in higher education to open a 1930s style tearoom in southwest London. I grew up in the 1950s in a typical British family that drank tea throughout the day but little did I know, as I baked endless supplies of scones and cakes for the tearoom at 4 am every day, that I would end up writing books and magazine articles, editing a tea magazine for the UK Tea Council, speaking at world tea conferences, training staff in hotels, travelling to almost every major tea producing country, and eventually working today as Director of Studies at the UK Tea Academy.
John Griffiths has a talent for bringing history to life so that we are carried along by his storytelling and fluid narrative. We imagine ourselves right there with the characters he describes – the British East India Company and their opium trade with China; the spies and adventurers who brought tales of tea to the west; the merchants who encouraged the trade; and the botanists, politicians, government officials and pioneers planters who risked so much to establish the tea industry in India. Griffiths immerses us is every aspect of the business from its 16th-century beginnings to the famous companies of the 20th century, and along the way, dips into all that lies behind the story of success. Enlightening and fascinating!
Tea is a phenomenon that has changed the attitudes of one nation to another, exposed divisions of class and race, ossified social behaviour, shaped the ethics of business, influenced relations between management and labour and led to significant advances in medicine. "Tea" is a comprehensive study of a drink that is imbibed daily by over half the population of the world, looking at the phenomenon as well as the commodity - from 2,500 AD to the present day. Following on from the success of books such as Cod, Tobacco and Salt, "Tea" takes a well-researched and fascinating approach to the…
When Annie Thornton, midwife and apprentice witch, falls through time to a 15th-century Yorkshire village with her telepathic cat, Rosamund, she befriends Will and Jack, two soldiers returning from the French Wars. Mistress Meg, Annie’s ancestral aunt living in the 15th century, is…
I fell into the world of tea by chance in the 1980s when I gave up a career in higher education to open a 1930s style tearoom in southwest London. I grew up in the 1950s in a typical British family that drank tea throughout the day but little did I know, as I baked endless supplies of scones and cakes for the tearoom at 4 am every day, that I would end up writing books and magazine articles, editing a tea magazine for the UK Tea Council, speaking at world tea conferences, training staff in hotels, travelling to almost every major tea producing country, and eventually working today as Director of Studies at the UK Tea Academy.
This hefty tome is a dream book for anyone fascinated, as I am, by the ancient trade road, dating back to the 7th century AD and stretching over 1000 miles, along which tea was carried on the backs of pack animals from southwest China up to Lhasa, where it was traded for Tibetan ponies. Freeman’s wonderful photographs and Ahmad’s text capture and explain the life of the villagers in the famous tea mountains of southern Yunnan, where tea trees live up to 3,000 years; the rituals of the Buddhist priests in their temples; the different ethnic peoples that live in the remote regions along the road; the ceremonies that take place to honour the ancient tea trees, and views of the landscape where rivers wind, yaks graze, and life revolves around tea.
One of the longest and most dramatic trade routes of the ancient world, the Tea Horse Road carried a crucial exchange for 13 centuries between China and Tibet. China needed war horses to protect its northern frontier and Tibet could supply them. When the Tibetans discovered tea in the 7th century, it became a staple of their diet, but its origins are in southwest China, and they had to trade for it.
The result was a network of trails covering more than 3,000 kilometers through forests, gorges and high passes onto the Himalayan plateaus, traversed by horse, mule and yak…
I grew up surrounded by a library of dusty vintage novels, so perhaps it wasn’t that surprising that I went on to write my own gaslamp fantasy influenced by English folklore and Victorian heroines. I love historical novels that provoke wonder, and magical novels that are rich with history, and (blame it on being an only child?) most of all I love a female protagonist I’d want to have tea with.
Isabella Farrah is one of the funniest, most exasperating leading ladies in literature. I was surprised and delighted by this loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast with murder, cake, pretty dresses, magic, intrigue, and Isabella’s hilarious brand of ladylike mayhem.
I would probably choke on my cake laughing if I ever had tea with Isabella (and maybe she’d slip something into my tea), but it would be worth it.
"...an inventive and funny mystery with a dynamic lead, which will make you want to pick up the next book in the series." Self-Publishing Review, 4½ Stars Beauty met the Beast and there was . . . Bloody murder? It’s the Annual Ambassadorial Ball in Glause, and Lady Isabella Farrah, the daughter of New Civet’s Ambassador, is feeling pleasantly scintillated. In the library is Lord Pecus, a charming gentleman whose double mask hides a beastly face, and who has decided that Isabella is the very person to break the Pecus curse. In the ball-room is young Lord Topher, who is…
I’ve always been interested in the bigger questions of life, spirituality, and the way our minds work, but it wasn’t until I came up close and personal with grief that I really delved into reading more about death and the afterlife. After my husband died, I read just about every book I could find on the topic, especially those that taught me more about the greater mysteries of love, loss, mental illness, and myself.
There is something so warm and real about this incredible memoir as if I was sitting down with the author, Nancy, and she was telling me her story over tea, and even as the daylight faded, more tea was poured, and the story continued because I wanted to hear more about her late daughter Nicole.
This story is told with such grace that, even for those with different or no spiritual beliefs, the author’s faith in God is simply part of the story and is endearing rather than offensive.
They belong to each other, Nancy and Nicole—mother and daughter. They’re two halves of a whole, two facets of the same breath—until the day Nicole exhales. . . and never inhales again.
After the death of her daughter, and quickly losing her own battle with grief, Nancy moves from the house she can no longer bear to live in. While packing, she finds a box in the attic. Inside she uncovers treasures she didn’t know existed and evidence that her and her daughter’s lives had been more divinely entwined than she could’ve imagined.
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassion…
Big things have happened long ago and far away. As a kid born into the American Midwest in the Cold War, the world out there seemed like a scary place. But reading was a way to imagine other realities, and from college onward, I have been fortunate enough to encounter people in person and on paper who share their stories if you put in the work and listen. Keeping your ears open, unknown but intelligible worlds of personal contingencies and impersonal forces from other times and places can be glimpsed. How better to begin exploring the communion and conflict than by attending to changes in our practices of eating and medicating?
I found Rappaport’s book to be a really marvelous example of what is now being called “entangled history.” That kind of history picks up one topic and follows it wherever it leads. Because tangible things are easier to trace than intangible things (like ideas or rumors), commodity history is a lively subject, but this is something larger.
Tea has a chemistry to it that people gravitate toward, but there is so much more to the story about why it is so widely consumed in our world today. Once it was a substance grown and sipped in China, but European trading companies also discovered that markets for it could be created. It was famously a commodity deeply entangled in the opium wars, in the new plantation economies of northeastern India and Sri Lanka/Ceylon, and other systems of production.
But Rappaport has so much more to say about the consumption side, too:…
How the global tea industry influenced the international economy and the rise of mass consumerism
Tea has been one of the most popular commodities in the world. For centuries, profits from its growth and sales funded wars and fueled colonization, and its cultivation brought about massive changes-in land use, labor systems, market practices, and social hierarchies-the effects of which are with us even today. A Thirst for Empire takes an in-depth historical look at how men and women-through the tea industry in Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa-transformed global tastes and habits. An expansive and original global history of imperial…
As a well-traveled writer who has lived around the world, I’ve visited a tea salon in almost every city I visit. My favorite places are small communities filled with old-timers and well-wrought customs. Our lives are very fast-paced, and books that celebrate slowing down and a simpler life will always be a draw for me. Since I’m primarily a fiction writer, I also like a little mystery and tension in these otherwise idyllic little towns, not to mention the occasional scone and cup of tea.
With the advent of food trucks, I can’t think of anything more charming or lovely than a tea shop that hits the road, and in a bright pink van, no less. Raisin’s writing goes straight to the point–we’re on the road with Rosie in no time, and it’s a journey you won’t want to miss.
A swanky job as a Michelin-starred Sous Chef, a loving husband and future children scheduled for an exact date.
That's until she comes home one day to find her husband's pre-packed bag and a confession that he's had an affair.
Heartbroken and devastated, Rosie drowns her sorrows in a glass (or three) of wine, only to discover the following morning that she has spontaneously invested in a bright pink campervan to facilitate her grand plans to travel the country.
As a well-traveled writer who has lived around the world, I’ve visited a tea salon in almost every city I visit. My favorite places are small communities filled with old-timers and well-wrought customs. Our lives are very fast-paced, and books that celebrate slowing down and a simpler life will always be a draw for me. Since I’m primarily a fiction writer, I also like a little mystery and tension in these otherwise idyllic little towns, not to mention the occasional scone and cup of tea.
While this isn’t a novel about tea or tea salons, it’s a great primer on all things tea related. Fortnum & Mason has been in the tea business since 1707, and their expertise will help you brew the perfect pot of tea to pair with your favorite tea salon novel.
Time for Tea is a celebration of Fortnum's passion for tea in its every form. Drawing on over 300 years of experience, you will find the history, geography, seasonality of tea - everything from leaf to cup - as well as 50 delicious recipes.
Fortnum & Mason has nearly as much experience of selling tea as Britain has of drinking it - some three centuries' worth, in fact, since the early eighteenth century.
This fun and deeply authoritative guide whisks you through all the information you need to get the most out of your cuppa. It instructs on how to…
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
I grew up in Los Angeles, the mecca of global consumer culture. I became a historian to escape from what I saw as this shallow, surface culture but through my work, I have returned to the mall. My work uses history to show how consumer desires are not natural. Instead, I ask why people consume particular things in particular places, and I show how they attribute meaning to the things they buy. I am not a specialist on China but while researching and writing on tea's global political economy and consumer culture I became fascinated by how China contributed to the making of global tastes, desires, and material culture. These books illuminate the history and cultural life of tea, opium, porcelain, and other things within and beyond China.
This is the book I had been waiting for and was so delighted when it appeared. It provides a fascinating and sweeping account of the meaning of tea in Chinese culture from its earliest appearance to the late imperial period. Benn has a wonderful eye for examples and delicious details that illuminate how religion, art, poetry, class, and gender created a commodity and culture that travelled around the world. A great place to start if you are interested in the history of tea or China.
Tea in China explores the contours of religious and cultural transformation in traditional China from the point of view of an everyday commodity and popularbeverage. Th e work traces the development of tea drinking from its mythical origins to the nineteenth century and examines the changes in aesthetics, ritual, science, health, and knowledge that tea brought with it.
Th e shift in drinking habits that occurred in late medieval China cannot be understood without an appreciation of the fact that Buddhist monks were responsible for not only changing people's attitudes toward the intoxicating substance, but also the proliferation of tea…
