Reading Tea Leaves discussion

Please use this thread to discuss chapter 1 through 4 :)

For those of you that are currently reading the book, how far along are you? I've read (and re-read) this book many times over the years.

Part 1 is a bit of whirlwind of fasts and history but I thought JNP did a great job of making it all entertaining while still being factual. The comparison he made to European monks making wine and Buddhist monks making tea is not one I've seen mentioned often but it's one that I'd like to explore further.

I don't own this book. I need to expand my tea book library.

Georgia wrote: "I don't own this book. I need to expand my tea book library."

I'd be happy to lend you my copy if you'd like. :)

Thanks, Nicole. I'm going to see if I can borrow through the library & find a used copy to purchase.

I've got a copy I got from a tea fest I went to a couple years back. Anyone else on board?

I still have my dogeared old copy of the original Tea Lover's Treasury. It was my first book on tea and was an enthusiastic introduction to the subject. The Ultimate Tea Lover's Treasury serves this same purpose now; it is a fine introduction for all tea drinkers and it serves as a good general reference source.

The first section is the best part of the book and an excellent introduction to tea history. There is not much here that is not also available from other sources but it is artfully and entertainingly presented. To his great credit, Pratt weaves and dances in an attempt to avoid being American or Euro-centric in his recounting but in the this he inevitably fails. It is, after all, a story for westerners and it will necessarily have a westerner's perspective.

Happily Pratt avoids many of the myths (e.g. what's the origin of the teabag) that plague other introductions to tea. My only real disappointment is that there was not the space to delve a little deeper into the tragedy of the Opium Wars. It took the Chinese tea industry over a century to recover from the fallout of these events.

Nicole wrote: "For those of you that are currently reading the book, how far along are you? I've read (and re-read) this book many times over the years.

Part 1 is a bit of whirlwind of fasts and history but I th..."

I agree the first part was a whirlwind of names, dates, and dynasties. It was the most difficult part of the book for me, but I did find it interesting and informative. Throughout the book I would have found maps helpful to show where in the world what was taking place was taking place. Also, with how tea travelled throughout the world. As a funny aside, I answered a Jeopardy question regarding the opening of the Suez canal in the tea trade by the information in this book! Ha!

As I tell people in my tasting sessions, the history of tea is long and utterly fascinating. JNP manages to condense a lot of history into a fairly short space (whole volumes could – and have been – written on the subject).

Two things really stand out for me in these chapters. First, they are heavily English-centric. That is, the story of tea is told from a very Western point of view. Tea was around loooong before the Brits came into the picture, but we don’t get enough of that perspective or history. The second thing is JNP’s delightful tone of voice. When I read, I imagine sitting in front of a fire with a slightly quirky grandfatherly type who gets going on telling a tale of his youth. Pratt does make it sound almost like he has experienced all these things himself and he’s spinning the yarn, as it were. But I know from other reading that his information is solid and I learned a lot along the way.

My biggest complaint about the book relates especially to this section and Part II: NO INDEX! There is so much information in here and a reference book, even one framed as a delightful tale, desperately cries out for an index so readers can go back and find particular bits they want to remember. C’mon, there must be professional indexers out there who are also tea fans. Any takers?