I am a Book Smeller

I once read an article by the comedian and writer, Art Buchwald, who confessed he was a book sniffer as he called it.  While I was happy to find someone else confess to this bibliographic crime, I have always said that I smell books, not sniff them.  I guess there is a difference and if I looked up both in the dictionary I would see the difference.  But I’m not sure that I am ready to be told what it is.  The result is the same.

          I have always remembered smells, both good and bad before any other senses I think.  I vividly remember in elementary school the smell of a freshly sharpened pencil mixed with the smell of paper in a Clearfield writing tablet with an Indianhead, complete with a chief’s headdress on the cover. Since I went to school in Pennsylvania, I always figured that the paper tablets were made in Clearfield, PA.  It’s hard for me to describe what those smells were except to say the pencil smelled of freshly cut wood.  It didn’t have a heavy woodsy smell or one that smelled of cedar or something else.  It was almost like sawdust. The paper is even harder to explain.  I always associated it with plain, inexpensive paper which it probably was.  It didn’t have a shiny feel to it, but soft, but rough feel if you will.  Every once in awhile, I find a paperback whose pages smell just like that.

          Books smell differently depending on their subject matter.  Nonfiction smell different from fiction.  And textbooks smell completely different.  When I smell a textbook I am instantly back in college – not high school for whatever reason, but college – I’m usually in Dr. Mitchell’s English history class.  I’ve always loved to smell my books, but never really tried to give the odors a name.  That is except for old, moldy books.  They smell of mold; which is different than old books in good condition which just smell old and warm.  Yes, warm.  If you smell a shiny textbook or any book for that matter, it will have a cold feeling smell.  I guess I will have to try harder to classify each book’s smell so I can compare them.

          Of course, some books are not worthy of reading because of their smell or odor.  I’m not saying a natural smell that came with the book, but one that was subjected to intense torture and attempted murder.  I once found a library book on the shelf which looked like it was dipped in some kind oil and dried.  Its pages were warped and stained. When I opened it, the odors of cigarette smoke and cooking oil was so intense I immediately closed it and turned my head for a clean breath of air.  Oddly, it was not a cookbook.  It was Jaws, by Peter Benchley.  Go figure.  

(Ebrima 11 font)