I’ve joked about this with writer friends on Twitter (you know who you are). When I get a new book, one of the first things I do is open it up and take in the scent of its pages: paper on ink. If you’re a book sniffer like me (that sounded a lot better in my mind) you understand that not all books smell the same, and you might even have a favorite scent..
Personally I’m a big fan of coffee table books—you know those glossy pages that smell almost plasticky? And old books that have sat in used bookstores or libraries for decades, their pages yellow and musty. And don’t forget new books, purchased right out of the store, which have a certain freshness, a crispiness that I imagine comes from the covers. They haven’t yet been handled enough; they’re like new cars that still smell like the sum of their parts rather than the people who will soon occupy them.
But I’ve discovered a new book scent. Last week my mother-in-law mailed me a copy of Bluebird, or The Invention of Happiness, because she was so taken by it she wanted me to read it. So I curled into bed, cracked it open…and instantly felt like I was back in her home. The scent of her house, a subtle, rosy cleanliness, seeped from the pages. It had managed to linger there even after my mother-in-law wrapped up the book and shipped it across state borders to my home. Before I’d read a single word, this book had transported me.
I know everyone’s homes have a unique smell. The food we eat, the soap we use, even the dirt we track in from outside, create a one-of-a-kind scent that we are probably oblivious to, but others smell and associate with us. I can close my eyes and imagine what my sister’s house smells like. I think of my grandparents’ house in Peru and the first thing that comes to mind is not how it looks, but its scent, how their suitcases carried it with them when they’d visit, and how I’d be hard-pressed to describe it even though I’d recognize it in one breath.
It just hadn’t occurred to me that our books might hold on to these scents in each page. That aside from the stories written inside them, they might carry the stories of those who read them. And of course now I want to go through my own books, try to sniff out what parts of my existence they’ve tracked over the years. A part of me knows it’d be useless because our own scents are invisible to us. They are like accents, which we only detect when they come from a foreign tongue.
Still, I love the idea of my books sitting on my shelves, breathing it all in.
photo credit: ~❤ ßäявiäh ❤~
