The Perfect Scent
A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York

Time on To-Read List: 1 year (5 months on physical pile, given by a friend) Reason for Still Lurking on To-Read: Not What Fingers Spasmodically Reach For Motivation For Finally Picking It Up: I read the first few pages (and then didn’t stop). Man, if you would have told me that I would read, much less......more

I have probably worn cologne less than a handful of times in my life. I have no real interest in perfume. And yet, I was drawn to this book precisely because of my lack of interest in the subject. Perfume is something I so rarely think about that the idea that whole lives revolve around this intrigu......more

It's quite likely that anyone with a fanatical perfume hobby, such as me, will eat up this book. I certainly did. It covered some territory I already knew, but on the whole it was quite the eye-opener about the strange and magical and illogical world of modern perfumery. Burr's assorted opinions on......more

I enjoyed this immensely. It's one of those books one carries around reading aloud from. Full of fascinating chemistry tidbits as well as the slightly less fascinating celebrity/designer ones. Burr's scathing, off-the-cuff assessments of current perfumes are hilarious, as are his other asides. Here'......more

4.5 stars Another book about perfume that is one of my favs of the year so far... This was deliciously technical but also so dramatic it could easily be adapted into a movie. I definitely want to reread this someday - there's so much interesting info in here I didn't feel like I could process it all i......more