Customer Reviews

The Essence of Incense : Bringing Fragrance into the Home

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The cover price of this book would give one more than adequate funds to build a lovely incense stash and purchase a couple of cool, simple burners. Here's my book, for free: buy a bunch of incense at a shop, or at the sidewalk mon's incense table or online- be adventurous and unafraid of your own instincts. Now, burn it. Write down their names, and mark which ones you like or don't like. Don't buy the stinky ones again. How hard is that? I could see if this book told one how to make incense, and believe me, I'm a book person, but heavens, have we gotten so helpless that we need this to tell us all about how to enjoy something so simple? Proof you can truly publish anything these days.

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With so many fluff pieces on incense with nice pictures, who needs another??

The best English book on incense written so far is Silvio A. Bedini's, "The Trail of Time" which is really about incense time keeping in China & Japan, so that gives us an idea how much need there is for a substantial work on the subject.

A few good introductory books have been written: David Pybus; Kodo - The Way of Incense, Kiyoko Morita; The Book of Incense; and Rizzi - The Complete Book of Incense.

What concerns me is a continuing market for books like this one by Rosen hurt the publication of a well researched and presented book on the subject.

If you get this book, it DOES NOT teach you how to make your own incense. However, it only tells you how you can have incense in your life if its a stressful one. This book doesn't really tell you all the things that can also release stress as well, besides incense. Its not a book that i would recommend to someone cause its very cut and dry and very blah with its content, however, the pictures are very well done.

This is a beautifully written and photographed book with wonderfully different ideas on how to use incense in your own home, different types of incense you can find - either by type (sticks, cones, coils, etc) or by country - Japanese, Indian, etc. There are loads of great pictures, information on the history of incense and its uses as a spiritual practice. It's relaxing just to browse through this book!

I am primarilly writing this review in response to the unecessarilly harsh review given earlier. I read that review once before and it put me off of wanting to buy this book but just recently I saw it for sale used and bought it. I am glad I did, too! This is a beautiful little book with pictures that look like they should be in a $60.00 coffee table book The content it more about the love, experience and joy of burning incense than it is a complete treatise on the subject and, to some, may be filled with a bit too much New Age sentimentality and ceremony but overall this is a wonderful, lovingly written little book that I think most people will truly enjoy. It is not really for someone with considerable experienced with incense but if you are just getting into incense I think this is probably the best book available.