Organic? Fair trade or local? Rooibos. Black varieties. Herbals. Petite fours and traditional English high tea and low tea times. Something about the decorum required, elegant dress, and quality, taste-bud tingling food and drinks included in this past-time that make me happy, simply put. (I recommend the lesser fermented version of rooibos at Ladybug down the street, or the "Doot Da Doo" at Anna Banana's for a chai/espresso mix.)
I have a great adoration for Jane Austen's novels, her clever observations of people and motives and the way in which she weaves fairy tale endings with "universal truths" and relatable characters so seamlessly that one cannot help but dream that such flawed but eternally human heroines can be within one's self and her endings within one's grasp.
Favorite all-time authors include Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, George Elliot, Mark Twain.
I favor the classics (Joyce to Sartre to Dumas to Shakespeare, etc) and I tend to gravitate toward them rather than novels written in the last couple decades. However, I cannot give enough praise to Nick Hornby, Chuck Palahniuk, Barbara Kingsolver, Richard Yates, and a few more. Many types of art interest and inspire me but namely painting/watercolor, sculpting, photography, and filmmaking. I have a background in science and am interested in such areas of the discipline as naturopathy, eastern medicine and nutrition/exercise science.
