Thursday Tea is a fun meme for tea loving readers, hosted by Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog. I might not participate every week (so no need to worry ;) but I would like to every once in a while! To play along, all you need is some tea, a book, and the answers to these questions:

  • What tea are you drinking (and do you like it)?
  • What book are you reading (and do you like it)?
  • Tell us a little about your tea and your book, and whether or not the two go together.

The tea
I’m drinking organic green tea with ginger and lemon. Spicy! Because it’s cold outside: it has been snowing for the first time this winter :) It’s a Dutch brand, Piramide, using Vietnamese green tea from around Suoi Bu village. It is perfect for days like this.

The book
I’m reading The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson for my online bookgroup, the Boekgrrls. I can’t say much about it yet because I’ve only just begun and I like to know as little as possible about a book before I start… One thing I found out yesterday though is that one of my teenage idols, Simon Le Bon, has read it as well — and it was his disappointment of 2009 :\

Do they go together?
Yes, definitely! You only need to look at the picture to see that even the colours match ;) GOLD & hot! Since the tea is spicy it warms me up quite thoroughly; the ginger having a ‘bite’. This all fits with the beginning of my book, in which the protagonist causes a terrible car accident, getting horribly burned… Fire, heat and pain. Yes, I winced while reading :\
The cup I’m drinking from is one of my favourites, Arito ceramic from Japan. I’ve got a whole set of these :)

There’s also a thematic relation to tea as a water based drink. Of course burn victims dehydrate enormously, so they need a lot of fluids. And the title, The Gargoyle, refers to a grotesque carved stone with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building. The term originates from the French gargouille, originally ‘throat’ or ‘gullet’; cf. Latin gurgulio, gula, and similar words derived from the root gar, ‘to swallow’, which represented the gurgling sound of water (according to Wikipedia). I admit that this is a bit far-fetched and would make all teas appropriate if taken seriously. I just thought you might find the information interesting ;)