Beverly Rorem's book from 2008 reminds me of nothing so much as a coloring book. It shares those dimensions and soft-cover quality. And while there are no pictures to apply my crayons to, the book might be improved by their inclusion. But maybe I'm just too critical.
The author is clearly on a crusade. She is not a tea expert (and not a writer), but a self-taught tea lover. She opens the book saying that, "tea is sexy, tea is glamourous, tea is funky," but her examples don't demonstrate these ideas. Just because there is a tea shop in the East Village doesn't mean that tea is funky. The availability of more than one kind of tea at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas does not make tea glamourous. There's just no evidence in this book that tea is sexy at all. But Rorem is certainly ardent, if not articulate.
The book jumps all over the place in terms of topics. It reads like a grade school book report: I've read a lot of stuff, now let me relate it all to you. The author mentions Starbucks twice in the first ten pages and five times by page 40, as if mentioning a popular coffee establishment will lend tea and this book credibility. She also tells you to read Wikipedia to research certain tea topics. The bibliography credits several articles from the Encyclopedia Britannica as sources for the book.
The book concludes with a long chapter on all of the health benefits of drinking tea and includes snippets on how tea can cure anything from ADD to Alzheimer's, and everything in-between.
Passion for Tea, while clearly passionate, is a clear example of the perils of self-publishing. In some ways I hope the author didn't have an editor, because this work does not do anyone credit.
But the cover is pretty!
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