As a kid, one of my favorite things to do when my mom took me to the local bookstore was sniffing books. Sounds a bit quirky, or obsessive/compulsive depending on how you view the world, but it was just one of many weird little rituals I held dear.
The best were the paperbacks, especially the older ones that had been collecting dust on the shelf for quite a while and were clearly not bestsellers. I would thumb one down from the shelves, then quickly and assiduously push my nose directly above the open pages while my hand flipped across them, releasing this oaky yet dusty smell that as long as I live, I will never forget. I would do this several times, and on a few embarrassing occasions, my book purchasing decision was directly proportional to how good the book smelt.
Now, I have to say that I had the art of smelling books down to a fine art. My favorites were the older ones that were taking up space on the shelves. I liked their rustic warmth, the grain seeded between the sheaves, the evocative, undeniable smell of newly-turned fall leaves, of wisdom and import coiled, waiting, in between delicately yellowing paper. I could never be bothered with the newer ones from a popular press because somehow their sheaves had a more manufactured, pungent aroma, uninviting and cold to my keen olfactory tools. Don’t even get me started on hard-back books.
And for sheer masochism, for some reason just a light sniffing was not enough. I behaved obsessively, as if sniffing crack, pursing my nostrils as hard as I could and inhaling deeply, convulsively. I really shoved my nose up into the pliable pages, perching it right against the seam glue that held them together. One of my biggest fears was onlookers, so I surreptitiously made sure I was out of the line of wandering eyes before I would feast my nose on as many books as I could get hold of.
To this day, sometimes the urge still strikes me to sniff a good book. I still love that little miracle of flipping the pages and watching the dust motes fly out like an unhomed nest, their trajectory into light almost transparent. I like the satisfactory smell of must and age; like a fine wine, an older book that has been sitting on a bookshelf awaiting its turn also opens with a certain nose, and finishes beautifully.
Even if you don’t like reading very much, I guarantee you will like the zippy, staccato sound of pages being flipped in tumultuous succession. The comforting, oaky nose. The smell of knowledge flying out from the coarse, typeset sheaf. So go ahead, try it next time you are at your local bookstore. I promise no one’s watching.
