Readers know Lewis Barnavelt’s affection for books but who else is a book sniffer: “[Lewis] held the book up to his nose. It smelled like Old Spice talcum powder. Books that smelled that way were usually fun to read.”
Like Lewis in The House with a Clock in its Walls (1973), there is something strangely appealing about discovering the scent of an old book. I cannot help but wonder what affect these sensory snippets Bellairs slips into his writing have had on younger readers all these years later.
“For me it's comic books,” said fan Jon Caulkett. “I keep a large part of my collection in an old steamer trunk, and when I throw back the lid, the smell of old comics take me back to when I was a kid and my cousins would let me get into their collections. They were all a lot older than I was and it was a good way to keep me out of their hair at family get-togethers.”
But what is the smell? Authors Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez noted in their Perfumes: The A-Z Guide (1992):
Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us.
The CompoundChem site explored the connection between "old book smells" derived from chemical degradation back in 2014, too:
Other compounds given off have been marked as useful for determining the extent of degradation of old books. Furfural is one of these compounds. It can also be used to determine the age and composition of books, with books published after the mid-1800s emitting more furfural, and its emission generally increasing with publication year relative to older books composed of cotton or linen paper.
The Bellairsia archives do contain one humorous aside. Back in 2002, someone named J. Rieth wrote to say the thought of book sniffing sounded funny: "You guys are nuts! I was searching the web for Old Spice talc and got a laugh instead, thanks to you. Keep up the (good?) work."
So old books smell like vanilla or Old Spice talc or ... what do your books smell like?
1 comment:
I hope my books have as little smell as possible. In many cases the smells found in old books are bad and can be bad for the reader. Such smells as mold and mildew, Cigar and cigarette smoke, old sour wet basement odors, and the smell of cheap paper deteriorating. Unfortunately the last mentioned is run across fairly often these days. From the late 1800's through about the 1960's many books and newspapers were printed on cheap paper that was made using bad processes and worse chemicals. The chemicals left acidic residue behind that is a ticking time bomb. Often this paper will self destruct over time. Have you ever seen a Big Little Book? They are small but thick books with normally very brown looking paper. And why is the paper brown? Because the acid in the paper is slowly destroying it. If you put your nose in one of them you will get a strong smell and not one that I find enjoyable. But not all books from the period are on terrible paper. Some are even on great quality hand made paper. And having spent a lot of time in old bookstores, I know what you are saying about the good smell of old books. I think part of the smell is from the paper itself, but some of the odor has been picked up from the places the books were kept. Paper will absorb odors and some odors can be very hard to get out of the paper. The ones first mentioned above come to mind. But then I have smelled old books that have an attic smell or an old trunk smell. Cook books or books stored near a kitchen may have a food odor. And I am sure I have smelled books with a talcum powder smell that Lewis liked so much. I am a book smeller, I have to be because I am allergic to the musty and mildewed books that are often run across. I try to avoid them if I can, but sometimes I get a book with a bad smell and have to try to remove it. A process that is never sure and could never be considered a science. But I have enjoyed the smell of non musty/mildewed books for much of my life.
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