life as a book sniffer

I have a confession to make.

I sniff books.

Please, don't judge. Don't look askance. Stop raising your internet eyebrows in judgmental ridges, I say!

I can't help it. And may I ask:

HAS BOOK SNIFFING EVER HURT A SOUL?

I say no. (Unless of course, someone was allergic to a ink printed on a page and died tragically as they inhaled. )

It's an innocent enough act, once explained.

THE MECHANICS OF BOOK-SNIFFING

1. IN THE MIDST OF READING

I will be sprawled on the couch or perhaps lying on bed, with a good book in hand, scanning the lines, letting them wash over me in waves of language.


2. ONE OR TWO FATES WILL INEVITABLY THEN OCCUR:

a) My eyes will close, my arms crumple, and the weighty tome falls haphazardly comes to rest on my nose, whereupon I breathe in the musty scent of an inky-splashed book sniff delicately at the spine.

b) I come to the end of the chapter, and feel the need to spring nimble as a lame deer (i.e. fall) to my bookshelf, and sniff, just to see if the area surrounding my bookshelf is yet acquiring that bookstore-eque SMELL. That of thousands of pages nesting close together with stories winding through them.

My disappointed verdict, as always: Nope, doesn't smell bookish yet.





3. SMELLING EUPHORIA

I think a particularly good book tends to smell better than others. But all books smell--beyond their material scent, of their contents. Move beyond the mundane ink and paper descriptions and transcend your nasal limitations!

Doesn't Harry Potter smell a bit like, uhhh, MAGICAL WONDER?

Doesn't Hunger Games smell a bit like FRENZIED ACTION?

Doesn't I am the Messenger smell a bit like, uhh,COMING-OF-AGE?

Doesn't The Road smell a bit desperate and dusty (oh, wait, that might just be because of the two-feet dust layer over my room...)

I say thus to you naysayers: smells absolutely should be nonsensically conflated with feelings and ideas. Yes.


*A CONCLUSION IN WHICH THIS POST BRIEFLY MAKES SENSE*

In some strange way the scent of books is comforting. (:

I do really love that new book smell of bookstores, though. Always makes me pause when I step through the threshold of Barnes & Noble. *sigh*

Do you too enjoy the scent of books?