Pictured left is my physical Tea Journal. My old one was a flowery thing, although it has a long history. As soon as I saw this one, however, I had to pick it up (it has a teapot on the front, back, AND every other page! Plus interesting quotes from the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh), even though my old notebook hadn’t been filled yet. I mostly use it to list teas from companies that I’d like to try/checklists for said companies, as well as notes on tea places I’ve been to, and teas I’ve tried while not in the presence of the computer; it also has a few pages of interesting tea quotes I thought to jot down. My old book even had a poem or two by me, although not about tea. I have my poetic moments (but I rarely share them). There’s only one in there so far that I have any like for.
Category: Tea Books
Book: The Book of Tea
Returning again to my inexperience in blogging, I think I’m going to spend a post describing in my no-doubt monotone writing style, one of my favourite books to date; Okakura Kakuzo’s The Book of Tea. It is certainly my favourite tea book, and I like to suggest it to a lot of my friends (at least the tea-savvy ones), although it’s really not a book everyone can get into. It reads as a long, sometimes rambling exposition (something I personally enjoy), and constantly goes off on seemingly unrelated tangents; it is famous for being not so much about tea, but rather using tea as an analogical lens to view culture (western versus eastern) and art. Kakuzo was, after all, (and foremost) a man of the arts.