Books I Recommend 1

If you read a lot, like I do, you have a list of your favorite books and authors. For me, it's mainly about genre. Fiction. I love to read fiction. Nothing beats a really good story. There are several authors in that genre whom I could go on and on about, but I'll just give a synopsis of some of my favorite stories of fiction throughout the next few days.

Perfume: The Story of A Murderer by Patrick Suskind

This story is about Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He was born in Paris to a mother who was hanged for leaving him to die in the pestilent streets. He becomes obsessed with scent. He smells everything and knows what they are according to their scent. He navigates through streets by way of scent. He doesn't know what everything is named, but he learns by the way those objects smell. The vivid detail given by Suskind in this book is impeccable. When he escapes the putridity of his slave life to learn the art of preserving scent through perfume making, his obsession grows out of control. His ultimate goal is to preserve the scent of life itself. He does so by making his own version of essential oils. Human oils. He kills only the most beautiful women he can find and preserves their scent via distillation, wrapping them in fat and scrapping off their skin oils. It makes me wonder if that actually could be done. I don't think it could, but it's fascinating. Eventually he gets caught only to escape minutes before his execution by hypnotizing people with his intoxicating human perfume. Knowing he has the power to control kingdoms by a mere drop of his concoction, he ops for the martyrs way out. He douses himself in his perfume, walks towards a group of degenerate street vagrants, and is literally consumed by them.

The only thing just as powerful as the book itself, is the movie. It might not show every single detail the book offers, but it comes extremely close. You see the images on the screen and you can almost smell everything Grenouille does. Not to mention both Alan Rickman and Dustin Hoffman are in the film. If you don't have the patience for the book, I cannot praise the movie more.