My Annual Summer Reading List

Some aromatic reads for lazy summer days.

With summer just around the corner, as I like to do every year, today I want to share a few olfactory books I’m excited to read from the comfort of my hammock this summer. Let me know what you’re reading!

How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries (2026, Viking)

By David George Haskell

I interviewed David for my podcast last year to talk about his book Thirteen Ways To Smell A Tree, and in that conversation he teased this book. I was so happy when it finally came out earlier this year, and I got to read it. It’s incredibly rich with insights and goes well beyond the stereotypes we project onto flowers. I also interviewed David about the book for this Substack a few weeks ago. My biggest takeaway - flowers are treated exactly the same way as the sense of smell. They’re totally underrated and ignored. Go figure. Have a read and you’ll see for yourself.

Publisher Summary: An exquisite exploration of the power of flowers, placing them at the center of the story of how evolution created the world we know today. We live on a floral planet, yet flowers don’t get the credit they deserve. We admire them for their aesthetics, not their world-changing power. Inspired by the most up-to-date scientific research, David George Haskell observes, smells, and studies flowers such as magnolias, orchids, and roses, as well as fascinating but less well-known flowers such as seagrasses, to show us what we’ve been missing.

Olfactory Worldmaking (2026, University of Minnesota Press)

By Hsuan L. Hsu

I just came across this book and found the concept so intriguing. If you don’t know, Hsuan also wrote The Smell of Risk (2020), which made me think about the role smell plays in our life in totally new ways. I can only imagine this book will do the same - can’t wait!

Publisher’s Summary: Smell is a vital, if underappreciated, medium through which we inhabit and imagine the world. In Olfactory Worldmaking, Hsuan L. Hsu traces how olfactory experience communicates across visceral, material, and affective registers to offer new ways of relating, which challenge the extractive logics of racial and colonial capitalism. Blending environmental humanities, sensory studies, and critical ethnic studies, the book highlights how scent animates suppressed histories and marginalized memories.

Spice: The 16th-Century Contest That Shaped the Modern World (2024, Yale University Press)

By Roger Crowley

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but I’m obsessed with spices and history. So, when I came across this book I knew I had to read it. More than just flavor for our food, spices left an indelible mark on how our world is shaped today. And I think that will make for a delicious read!

Publisher’s Summary: The story of the sixteenth-century’s epic contest for the spice trade, which propelled European maritime exploration and conquest across Asia and the Pacific. Spices drove the early modern world economy, and for Europeans they represented riches on an unprecedented scale. Cloves and nutmeg could reach Europe only via a complex web of trade routes, and for decades Spanish and Portuguese explorers competed to find their elusive source. But when the Portuguese finally reached the spice islands of the Moluccas in 1511, they set in motion a fierce competition for control. Roger Crowley shows how this struggle shaped the modern world.

Symbolorum: The Secret Wisdom of Emblems (2025, Abbeville Press)

By Mandy Aftel

This is yet another treasure from Berkeley-based natural perfumer Mandy Aftel. It’s a different kind of book than her others, more visual and contemplative, but unmistakably Mandy. Because it’s structured a little differently, you can read one emblem and sit with it for a while. I plan on leaving the book on my nightstand and reading one at a time throughout the summer. If you’re curious how this book came to be, and how it ties in perfectly with her perfume work, you can listen to my conversation with Mandy about the book in this podcast episode.

Publisher’s Summary: Discover the esoteric insights and enchanting imagery of the Baroque emblem book - a long-lost cousin of the tarot. Aftel presents one hundred emblems from the Symbolorum et Emblematum of Camerarius, originally published between 1590 and 1604, with the circular engravings sensitively tinted in watercolor by Aftel herself, alongside translations from the Latin and her own commentary.

Full Bloom: A Novel (2025, Ballantine Books)

By Francesca Serritella

This one’s a page-turner - one that I couldn’t put down. It’s the perfect aromatic read for lazy summer days. The story centers around a perfume, but not in the way you think. It folds in themes of female ambition, sexual power, and the cost of being noticed simply by wearing perfume. While these sound like heavy topics, the read is actually light, fun, and entertaining. If you want to learn more, I had a great conversation with the author on my podcast that you can listen to here.

Publisher’s Summary: A national bestseller. A woman’s life is forever changed by a mysterious perfume in this stunning novel about ambition and untapped desire. Magical realism meets sharp social commentary in a story that asks: Who are you without your inhibitions?

The Perfumist of Paris (2023, MIRA Books)

By Alka Joshi

This is another novel centered around perfume, but focused on creation, ingredients, and cultural heritage. I’m excited to read this one over the summer and escape to France and India from the comfort of my hammock.

Publisher’s Summary: Set in 1970s Paris, Radha’s budding career as a perfumer must compete with the demands of her family and the secrets of her past. Filled with the rich and evocative scents of India and Paris, this novel will transport readers.

Kitchen Chinese: A Novel About Food, Family, and Finding Yourself (2010, Avon)

By Ann Mah

I confess, this one just looked like a fun read that takes me to cultures, and perspectives, I don’t know much about. And what a great way to dive in - through food and flavor. Looking forward to this one.

Publisher’s Summary: In the wake of a career-ending catastrophe, Isabelle Lee takes off for Beijing to stay with her older sister and finds a job writing restaurant reviews for an expat magazine. What she discovers is far more than she bargained for - about China, about her family, and about herself.

The Incense Game: A Novel of Feudal Japan (Sano Ichiro Novels) (2012, Minotaur Books)

By Laura Joh Rowland

Many of you know that I’m obsessed with Japan, so any opportunity to return there through a juicy novel, with a historical backdrop, and centered around incense - I’m in! I might even burn a little incense to immerse myself more deeply.

Publisher’s Summary: Japan, 1703. A devastating earthquake has left the city of Edo in shambles. When Sano Ichiro discovers the bodies of two young sisters buried beneath the rubble, he suspects that incense poisoning, not the earthquake, killed them. A powerful RT Book Review Magazine Reviewers’ Choice Award Winner.

No Place for Plants (2024, self-published)

By Dr. Kelly Ablard & Frauke Galia

Ok, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include some summer reading for the children in your life. I’m really proud of the book we’ve written and I hope the story not only inspires children to connect with Nature more, but to do so through their nose. Listen to the authors’ conversation here.

Publisher’s Summary: What happens when a cherished community garden is threatened to be taken away? The story of one community’s determination to save an urban green space — and what it smells, sounds, and feels like to fight for something you love.