Hey everyone! I’m not sure if this is a weird quirk but… I’m a sniffer. I’m a big sniffer of food. Even food I have eaten many times before, sometimes I sniff. I say it’s because I’m checking if it smells good/edible rather than rotten but it’s probably more of a habit now than anything. Don’t worry, I don’t go around sniffing other people’s food. They also say that a lot of the intensity of tasting food comes from the nose, hence you can’t taste food well when you’re sick. I also sniff my partner’s neck a lot. I love the fragrance of cologne and the aroma of clean skin. 
But this post isn’t about sniffing food or my partner’s neck… it’s about sniffing books. Even with my food sniffing tendencies, I don’t sniff books. I have sniffed them from time to time and I enjoy the smell of a bookstore but… books themselves? Do you sniff your books? Are there all kinds of book smells? I recall my sister once shoving a book in my face to smell which she claimed smelled like prawns. It did a little.
What have been your experiences with book sniffing?
- Ermisenda Alvarez
I do crack open each new book and hold it to my nose, nothing smells the same. I also love to open a new box of 96 crayola crayons and smell them, It instills a sense of adventure, nostalgia and creativity. Some smells are just comforting, I stopped apologizing for smelling a new book long ago.
That’s true, some smells are comforting. I do enjoy the smell of a bookstore. Thanks for sharing, Swirling Turnip.
i love the smells of attic, cellars, and yes, i can even tolerate some moisture smells, as the history of words comes to life as i flip through the pages of our past
Yes, the history of words. That’s the beauty of books. Thanks for commenting, Terry!
you are welcome
When I was young, hardback books tended to have a bitter smell, though not an unpleasant one. But it with other senses that I appreciated books. Firstly touch, and primarily with my lips on any sharp edges – the boards, the dust jacket, the edge of the pages singly or together; with my fingers I would bend the pages slightly and let them riffle-ruffle from my fingertips, feeling the breeze that made on my face. And that brings in sound, the sound the riffle-ruffle-raffling made, and the percussive slap-shut when I slammed it all together, and the sssifff-shuffle-slam of a carelessly-placed book sliding from the chair arm onto the floor. Then there was sight, particularly the eye-drawing red of a knight’s surcoat in a book of tales of the Round Table.
Later I would tear out fly-leaves to make maps.
M.
Wow, what a beautiful description of book love. That deserves to be written into a paperback. I’ll sniff those words.
Thanks for sharing!
I think I shall save the above, then, and make it into something.
Ha ha! I can’t say I purposely put my nose in books and sniff them, but they do smell divine.
Thanks for sharing.
I never really sniff books, but I do like the overall smell of the library or book store. Working at a bookstore, I’ve come to realize that plenty of people do sniff the books. One of my customers told me it was because they liked the combination of the different papers/ink/glue the different companies use. I shrug. To each their own right? We even have a few book-lickers at my store, among other strange characters with stranger habits concerning books but I won’t get into that.
Hah! All my time working at a bookstore I never encountered book-lickers, but yes book-sniffers. Thank for sharing your experiences, Sami.
Eliabeth: You worry me Ermisenda, but that’s because I’ve never been able to smell. Rory Gilmore sniffs books, so it must be ok