Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent

outstanding book! fascinating and easy to read, this book is very inspiring and one of the books i could read all the time. Please write another book soon, dear Mandy Aftel :)))

The author offers multiple ways to examine several common and some less so, scents. Recommended if you want to try making your own perfume.

Fun, intriguing book. Bumpy but interesting style.

Fun read, but lots of opinions stated as fact. If you enjoy scents, this is nice, and does include a few recipes too.

This book never ceased to charm the mind and the senses. In the book You begin your journey in understanding the fundamental nature of scent, from this stage you explore how fragrance comes into being and through your careful devotion to this book you will then come to a place where grace, beauty and glorified scent in combination discoveries itself as an essential feature of life. You will be amazed at what you have learned when the journey ends.

I love this book... so well written and vivid!

I enjoyed the book. I was not interested in making perfume but I did want to learn its origin and history and the book fulfilled that well.

First pages of the book do not display on my HDX. Downloaded a second time without change. I have not yet started reading the book, but look forward to it. Ms. Aftel is an engaging author.

For someone who knows nothing about the topic can be good but who knows something, is not as good. Flowery and poetic language is the rhetoric device used here but personally I prefer clear ans to the point when it come to gain knowledge. So I didn't like the look and to add this kindle edition is not satisfying at all.

I bought this book out of interest. As someone who enjoys fragrances and plays around Perfume. It was very elegantly written, very philosophical yet easy to read. it I really enjoyed it. If you watched the movie "Perfume", you will love this book, a history of perfume and what goes into making it. It is very exciting. Cannot upload Kindle image but lovely.

I am filled with admiration for Mandy Aftel’s writing about perfumery. Although a beautiful book to handle and read in ‘real’ form, with its thicker than normal, creamy coloured paper, beautiful, often archaic line drawings, and shiny, alluring woodcut/embossed type red cover, this is not a coffee table book. Rather, I would say Aftel is inviting you into imaginative, creative journeys of your own, those line drawings rather stirring the senses, connecting the reader to an old, but living history, in a way which artfully arranged, sumptuous colour photos of perfume bottles and ingredients could never do. Aftel shows herself to have style and she shows herself to have substance. Originally, Mandy Aftel, a highly respected American Artisan perfumer, was a psychotherapist, and what really appeals to me in her fascinating books is the reverse of the pile em high, whack em out ephemeral approach to instaperfume fashion. What insinuates from her books is relationship, a kind of development and connection which comes from the fact that she works with natural materials. Fragrant, divided into 6 chapters, 5 of which place a particular plant and the fragrant material it produces, centre stage is an invitation to journey in time and in space with the material itself, and those who have tended it, prized it, grown it, harvested it, worked with it, transported it, thought about it and worn it. There is something very special about a perfume from natural ingredients only. Firstly, it can never be standardised, and for some of us, that is a major part of its allure. The plant an essential oil or absolute may have been extracted from will have been a living, responsive entity. A batch of essential oil bought from this supplier, this year, from this place, will be somewhat different from the batch bought from the same supplier, from the same grower, last year, as the plant will be producing subtly varying chemistry, in response to this year’s changed growing conditions. Aftel’s book invites reflection. Her major star playing aromatics, each of which indicates different facets about our relationship with aromatics, are Cinnamon (the once, highly exotic, call to adventure and the spice trade) Mint (home, the familiar, the cottage garden, the everyday – home) Frankincense, (the search to transcend, to interconnect, to find spirit) Ambergris (the frankly weird, a vomited up exudate from sperm whales, acted on by wind, water wave, sun to, if the finder is lucky, turn to monetary gold) and finally, Jasmine (the gorgeous, the provocative, the sensuous delight) Around these star players are others, and, also instructions to encourage the fragrantly curious to experiment, to source, to make your own. A bibliography invites further fragrant journeys, too

Senti como se estivesse no Atelier de Mandy Aftel e ela nos contando um pouco a respeito do infinito universo dos aromas. Um luminoso relato sobre a perfumaria de antiquário.

This is not a book for you to learn how to actually make perfumes. You don’t really get deep informations on theory or at least direction on how to properly think of ways of making a perfume formulation. It’s a almost poetic book, quite figurative and it gives you a lot of information about perfumery history, and I felt like it’s a personal book for the author. If you like that sort of writing, then you’ll be satisfied. But if you’re looking for a "how to start making your own perfumes" kind of book, then I don’t think this is the one, as I wasn’t for me.