Today’s nugget of tea knowledge is The Book of Green Tea by Christine Dattner and it is, problematic. Probably not the best way to start out a review, but I just can’t think of any other way to introduce this book. It claims to be the book of green tea (it is right there in the title after all) but it spends an equal amount of time talking about other teas, and the time it spends on its intended subject matter is…problematic.
I know, I know…I keep using that word, let me explain why. First off, this book needed editing, at first I thought it needed editing by someone more versed in tea, but the more I read the more I realized that it needed editing by someone who was looking for consistencies. Oh man, so many inconsistencies, some exciting examples are Gyokuro being translated as precious rose in one place and precious dew in another…or my favorite calling Huang Shan Mu Dang (or Huang Shan Lu Mu Dan as I know it, translation error?) Huang Shan Mao Feng earlier in the book. Maybe it was because I had a splitting headache when I was reading this book and my tolerance was low, but the mistakes made me audibly groan.
There were also a lot of things that were just incorrect, but this is one of those things that I am not sure if it is due to a lack of easy to obtain information at the time. On the one hand I feel like in 2003 (when this book was written) that there were enough books and information on the internet that you could have gotten correct information on Gong Fu Cha and basic tea facts. However I will give it the benefit of the doubt, at least until I finish my time machine and can go back to 2003 to check for myself. So take that with a grain of salt.
This book is not all bad though, it is actually quite pretty and has some decent info. For instance I love the amount of detail it goes into for Moroccan tea, there are several pages devoted to Moroccan tea culture and history with some very nice photos. The various brewing instructions for the various teas is spot on, especially pleased to see Darjeeling shown at a lower temperature than other black teas. There are also some delicious looking tea themed recipes, a couple of them I might actually try.
So long story short, do I recommend this book? Well, no. It is not bad, there is certainly some moments where I actually contemplated adding this book to my collection, but all of this info is available in other books, other more correct and edited books. I say buy it if you think tea books are like Pokemon and you have to catch them all, if not, then I say search elsewhere.
For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-book-of-green-tea-tea-book-review.html
