Thursday Tea: June 11

Thursday Tea is a weekly meme hosted by yours truly. To play along, all you need is some tea, a book, and the will to answer some very simple 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 fell in love with Stash Tea‘s chai spice teas, and in my last tea spree I picked up some Chai White Tea. Here’s how it’s described on the website:

Chai is usually brewed very strong with lots of sugar and milk and often concentrated. Traditional Indian Chai combines rich black tea that is boiled in milk, and flavored with local spices such as sweet cinnamon, sharp clove, penetrating cardamom, and occasionally black peppercorns, pungent ginger and hot red chilies, and sweetened with sugar. This spicy tea is brewed in a samovar-type vessel and is always served very hot. Hurried customers often pour a little Chai in the saucer to cool it before drinking.

Stash White Chai tea is a lighter version of the traditional Chai. By blending premium white tea with cinnamon, whole cloves, cardamom, ginger root and cassia, we created a flavorful and spicy tea that goes well with milk and sugar and may be enjoyed any time of the day.

I like it, but I think it’s a little too light for me. I prefer something stronger, like the chai black teas.

The book: I’m currently about halfway through Scott Westerfeld’s The Last Days. It’s a sequel to Peeps, and I actually like it a little better than I did Peeps. I still find the vampires seriously creepy and not at all attractive, which I think is an accomplishment. Here’s the book’s summary from Amazon:

A mysterious epidemic holds the city in its thrall and the chaos is contagious—black oil spews from fire hydrants, rats have taken over Brooklyn, and every day, more people disappear. But all that matters to Pearl, Moz, and Zahler is their new band. They ignore the madness around them and join forces with a vampire lead singer and a drummer whose fractured mind can glimpse the coming darkness. Will their music stave off the end of the world…or summon it?

Set against the gritty apocalypse that began in Peeps, The Last Days is about five teenagers who find themselves creating the soundtrack for the end of the world.

Do they go together? I don’t really think so. The Last Days would go better with something stronger and more unusual in flavor, like this Blood Orange Tea (which I do have, actually).

What are you drinking/reading this Thursday?