The book I'm reading (A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly, paperback) smells really good. I got it used and the pages are slightly yellowed, but for some reason it smells better than most books I've read. Is that weird? I mean, brand new hardcover books always smell good, but this one is neither new nor hardcover. What is it that makes books smell so good?
You know how different people have different scents that are just them? I want the scent of me to smell a little like books. Not completely, because that would mean I would be neutral to the scent of books (because nobody ever realizes what their own scent smells like), and I like smelling a certain smell and going back to a memory that's associated with it. Every book (/series) smells different to me, though. Like when I was reading Crossed by Ally Condie, I kept having flashbacks to when I was reading Matched. Not because they have the same characters and there are references to the first book and everything, but because they smell the same. I feel like the scent of a book kind of impacts its mood... at least in my head. If Matched smelled more like The Hunger Games, I probably would have taken it more seriously. But it smells... sweeter. And Clockwork Prince smells the same as Clockwork Angel, which is like rain, kind of. I don't know, to me it smells like rain-- not worms, but that scent that people have always associated with "rain" even though in reality rainy days don't actually smell good at all.
It's funny how, to people who read avidly, reading isn't just looking at words on paper and allowing them to construct a story in your head. It's an experience; it uses at least three different senses to help your imagination make the story your own. I know that it doesn't really matter how you read, as long as you're doing it, but this is partly why I prefer real books to e-readers. An e-reader can't give you the feeling you get when you close the book after finishing it, and it can't mimic the scent of a brand new hardcover book or a really old paperback one, or even a semi-used, slightly-yellowed one that smells oddly wonderful. You just don't get the whole experience that way. [And side note: Tonight my cousin was at my house and she said that lately her Nook has been randomly dying on her while she's reading, and I wanted to say, "Huh. My books never do that."]
No comments:
Post a Comment