Nancy Booth has taken what can sometimes seem a confusing hobby, creating your own fragrances, and broken it down into easy to understand language. Her brief description of the history of fragrances was interesting and informative. I also appreciated the list she provides categorizing many popular scents on the market today. The quick and simple quiz included allows you to pinpoint what types of fragrances you or your friends are most drawn to. Her descriptions of the various scent profiles also helped me pinpoint which fragrances would appeal to friends and relatives. In addition to all of this she provides numerous, easy to follow recipes for perfumes and colognes that can be created quite easily at home. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in creating their own fragrances.
The recipes are informative with a description of the type of scent it will make along with the instructions. Resources for obtaining ingredients are included along with suggestions for storing, and gift giving. I have throughly enjoyed this book.
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I rated this book a 3 because it wasn't really what I expected. While it was very helpful to have the various scent classifications, the history of perfume and the Q&A test for finding your personal scent categories, this simply took up too much of the book. I guess my problem is that I was looking specifically for a "recipe book," not a page-after-page listing of designer perfumes and what scent category they fall into. Not quite sure why the author devoted so much of the book to this when the book is supposed to be about crafting your own perfumes and scents. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of great information here and it is well presented, it just wasn't really what I had in mind when I bought the book. :)Some Amazon reviewers seem to miss completely the point of the books they are rating. One example: among the reviews of a book on yoga for (very) fat people, some commentators criticize the author for changing some of the classical positions. If one can work out the correct positions, why is he(she) meddling into, and messing up, the references for less fortunate people?This book is another case. It clearly states that it is for beginers (and, by the way, never claims to be solely about 'natural' perfumes). A couple of reviewers criticize it for containing a classification of popular commercial perfumes into the categories of scents that is used in the text.
Is it really that difficult to figure out why such a table is useful for someone that is seeing a perfumes classification scheme for the first time? For those that still don't get it: it's because you exemplify each category with a scent that the reader either very probably knows (since he's reading a book on perfumes, chances are he knows the most common commercial ones) or can easily go to a nearby drugstore and try it.
Not only that, but we can all presume that one of the pleasures of learning the basics of perfume-making is when, for the first time, you make a "perfect copy" of commercially successfull product.
This is the sort of explanation that naturaly comes to anyone that approaches a book with a clear, good-natured mind. People who are unable to put themselves into the targeted audience's shoes would do better avoiding the confusion they create with their self-centered opinions.
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I was disappointed when I purchased this book about two years ago. I was expecting it to be more about natural perfumery. It does have some fully natural recipes, but many include synthetics. There's also a big focus on commercial perfumes and for me that was essentially useless. I was actually a bit surprised that Storey published this since most of their books have a more natural focus.Your appreciation of this book will be greatly influenced by your feelings about synthetic fragrances. I don't think the author did a poor job, she simply wrote from her own perspective, one that I do not share. If you are into synthetic fragrances and commercial perfumes, you will probably be happy with this book if not, look further.
Mandy Aftel has come out with a book about natural perfumery called Scents & Sensibilities that I do not own yet, but may be worth checking out. I do own Mindy Green's book about perfumery, which is full of recipes. The only problem I have with it is that so many of the blends contain sandalwood, an oil that comes from a threatened species.
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