"Novel" teas (what to sip while you're reading)

Any type of nature-y or outdoorsy type books I always go for a Keemun. It started with 127 Hours Between a Rock and a Hard Place and now I always read those type of books with Keemun. I am currently reading A Glossary of Chinese Puerh Tea with guess what….. Chinese Puerh tea. Hahaha

If you like easy to read mystery (mostly women will prefer this) Laura Childs has a whole Tea Shop series. I match the tea I’m drinking to the book.

Such as Death by Darjeeling

I always like to drink whatever the characters are drinking. For example, in “Elegance of the Hedgehog” one of the main characters brews coffee for the smell and then drinks a dark tea – and I find that the combination goes well with the book.

Also, as a point of interest, there is actually a bagged tea company called “novelteas” that uses famous sayings about tea and reading on their tea tags. The tea isn’t too bad either..
Here is the link: http://bagladiestea.com/novel-tea.html

Ive just discovered Anne of Green Gables and I’m really enjoying the series! Why didn’t I read this in my youth? It’s great!

Anyway, the characters are always having tea with cakes and preserves. And I totally wish I could join them! I’m not sure what kind of tea Canadians drank in the 1900s. Im guessing black?

Am I old to have a Anne of Green Gables themed tea party?

OK…I’ve actually hit a title I can’t match with anything. Zombies of the Gene Pool by Sharyn McCrumb. A group of 1950’s schlock sci-fi writers reunite after 35 years and a murder ensures. (Fun book so far.)

I LOVE reading Carlos Ruiz Zafon books. He is probably my favourite author (that’s still alive). His books are kind of a gothic-type fiction. They kind of have a dark, old world feel to them, so for me, Black tea is the tea of choice. It just seems to really reflect the mood of them. And I usually choose something that is caramel or nutty.

Given too, black teas are my favourite. They have such unmistakeable bold flavours usually. I absolutely love getting lost in a cup of black tea.

I am reading Swamplandia! by Karen Russell.
Book Description
Publication Date: February 1, 2011
From the celebrated twenty-nine-year-old author of the everywhere-heralded short-story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (“How I wish these were my own words, instead of the breakneck demon writer Karen Russell’s . . . Run for your life. This girl is on fire”—Los Angeles Times Book Review) comes a blazingly original debut novel that takes us back to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine.

The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly #1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava’s father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety-eight gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.

Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, Karen Russell has written an utterly singular novel about a family’s struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking. An arrestingly beautiful and inventive work from a vibrant new voice in fiction.
http://www.amazon.com/Swamplandia-Karen-Russell/dp/0307263991/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340747273&sr=8-1&keywords=swamplandia%21