Library
Reviews of the best books I have read on the subject of beauty.
General Beauty Books
Encyclopedia of Essential Oils
If you want a cheap, reasonably sized and easily understandable guide to individual essential oils, I really don’t think you can do better than Julia Lawless’s book. It covers the well known ones in quite a bit of detail, rather than having lots of sketchy descriptions of a wider range. This is what most people would want, and I can’t really fault this book as an introduction.
Liz Earle’s Guide to Beauty
If someone knew very little about how the skin worked and wanted to know more Liz Earle’s book would be a very good starting point. It is a beautifully put together book with a nice clean looking design and plenty of illustrations. Liz Earle has an easy to read style of writing and the book is well laid out so you can find what you are likely to be interested in. I don’t think many people would simply read it through from cover to cover – it is very well suited to looking up something you might be interested in. Its not a catalogue of her own products.
Liz is obviously a celebrity not a scientist, so if you are really interested in getting into the subject of the science behind beauty you are going to have to look for works that go into more depth, but this is a pretty good starting point. I have been obliged to give this book a good review because it is very good, but I am a bit cheesed off that a celebrity has written a book that should have been written by someone who has worked hard to acquire the knowledge. Just to balance things up I will mention a book I haven’t read, which is Liz Earle’s guide to Detox. I am totally uninterested in this subject so even if I put the book in front of my eyes I don’t think I could force myself to read it. The problem with the whole subject of detox is I have no idea what is meant by it. We have a very effective liver that gets rid of toxins from our body. I have never seen the slightest evidence that either it needs help or that any of the proposed ‘detox’ products, diets and procedures have any detoxifying effect at all, or indeed much in the way of effects. It all sounds very much like preying on people’s insecurities to sell them rubbish.
Books about Weight Loss and Slimming
There are so many diets out there and so much contradictory and self serving information it is almost impossible to know where to start on this subject. My philosophy is that any diet has to have a logical story behind it, have some kind of evidence that it works and not rely on a single soundbite style gimmick. The other thing to remember is that we are all different and we all change as we age. When trying out a diet the key thing is to listen to your body. If you are feeling tired or sick, or even flatulent, something is probably wrong. The aim should be to get slimmer AND healthier. Simply starving yourself is only going to work in the short run.
Beauty Background – History, People, Bloggers etc
Trotula di Ruggiero was the first beauty blogger. She made a great contribution to the development of women’s medicine as well as writing the first treatise on cosmetology. The Middle Ages weren’t nearly as primitive as we often think. Trotula was able to publish her treatise in Salerno in the twelth century. It was only in later centuries that it was doubted that such an erudite work could truly have been written by a woman.
The Cosmetics Ingredient Dictionary is simply the book where all the official names for the ingredients on your product’s ingredient listing come from. It is in four volumes and is an invaluable reference. Most editions sell out pretty quickly so buy it while you can.
International Cosmetic Ingredient Dictionary
