The Test of a True Book Lover?

My office assistant caught me smelling a book the other day.  She laughed at me.  “What, you’ve never smelled a book?” I asked.  She shook her head, smiling, as she always does because the people that hired her are all delightfully wacky.  So I invited her to give it a whiff.  It was a nasty smelling book: brand new, full color and glossy.  A very inky smell.  But totally different than a new pulp paperback, which smells entirely different than an old musty tome.  If you stick your face in books all the time how can you not notice their scent?  And if you love books, you must have had your nose buried in a large number of them.  How can you not come to expect that a certain kind of book will smell a certain way?  And following that, wouldn’t there be a natural curiosity to see, on occasion, if the book you are holding meets your olfactory expectations?  I’m not trying to start a fetish club here, just owning up to a fact, the kind of fact that explains how I wound up in this business.

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