In which Anna does not get Old Book Smell

[annathepiper]

I had a lovely little discussion about this on Facebook over the weekend, so I’m pulling this up into its own post.

Time and time again, in the eternal print vs. digital debate on books, one of the arguments I see the pro-print folks put forth is that ebooks can never replace the smell of an old book for them. People describe how it’s a vanilla-like smell, or in some cases brown-sugar-like. It’s a real and measurable phenonemon; it’s been studied! And intellectually, I certainly understand why people connect with it so strongly. It’s also a real and measurable phenomenon that people develop emotional attachments to smells, and certainly, I very much understand how a treasured book creates an emotional attachment.

But the smell thing? That doesn’t happen with me. Mostly, when I smell an old book, I have to fight off the urge to sneeze. Old books smell like dust to me, not like vanilla or brown sugar. Dara tells me it doesn’t happen with her, either. It makes me wonder if there’s a genetic thing going on here, like how cilantro tastes like battery acid to Dara.

Because as far as I can tell, my sense of smell isn’t particularly impaired. There are lots of smells I find pleasurable: tasty things baking, the smell of the ocean, wood crackling in a fireplace, the rosemary-and-lavender blend I like to use in my bubble bath. I do not, however, tend to form emotional attachments to smells. So I’m lacking one of the big factors I see cited on the print side of print vs. digital.

One of the folks in my Facebook discussion said she always thought of Giles in an early episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “I, Robot”:

Jenny Calendar: Honestly, what is it about them that bothers you so much?

Giles: The smell.

Jenny Calendar: Computers don’t smell, Rupert.

Giles: I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a – it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It’s-it’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.

Me, I always think of the Star Trek TOS series episode “Court Martial”:

Cogley: Books, young man, books. Thousands of them. If time wasn’t so important, I’d show you something. My library. Thousands of books.

Captain James T. Kirk: And what would be the point?

Cogley: This is where the law is. Not in that homogenized, pasteurized synthesizer.

With powerful quotes like this in our pop culture references, honestly, I can’t blame my fellow book aficiandos for being so passionate about books as physical objects. Our culture does value them, and rightly so–though I could also argue that it doesn’t value them nearly as much as it should.

For me, though, the value and emotional attachment is not in the physical object, no matter how good it smells.

For me, Cogley and Giles are wrong. It’s the content of the books, their knowledge, their stories, that create the emotional attachment for me.

That is, indeed, the entire point of a book.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Comments

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

My aversion to e-books is nothing so intangible, it's far more the practicalities of where I do most of my reading. I read a lot while soaking in the bath - not somewhere I want to take an ebook. In summer, I read outdoors while I'm enjoying the sun - a screen becomes invisible. I read in bed - paper is far more flexible if I fall asleep with it!

So no ebooks for me. I'd never make the time to sit with it and read what was on it.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, though this post is less about print vs. digital in general and more about me being bemused by the whole "book smell" thing, since it's not a factor for me.

I'm not trying to change anybody's opinion here on the print vs. digital thing, since one likes what one likes. :)

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

I have to admit to liking the smell of libraries. I spent so much time in them as a kid. My sense of smell is pretty poor, though, so I don't often get much from just one book.

[annathepiper]

Right there with you on the libraries, I spent oodles of time in my high school library during the period I had as a study hall... though I don't have a smell memory associated with that. I have lots of memories associated with reading the actual stories. :)

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

I don’t get “vanilla” or “brown sugar” either. The scent of old books is distinct from both.

However, computers *do* have an odor: warm plastic and rosin-based soldier, with a hint of ozone. It’s just the same smell regardless of what’s on the screen.

Aside from emotional connotations and the collector value of old books, for most of history people have made notes in the documents they own, including ancient scrolls. Aside from providing a connection with the past, these notes can give additional information. (I wonder if some of the ancient markings placed over cave paintings were critical comments. ;-)

[annathepiper]

Yeah, and you can make notes on ereaders, too. People do it on Kindles all the time. One of the reasons I've seen people bitch so loudly at Amazon for their various book-nuking scandals is because they've caused people to lose their notes taken on various ebooks.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

I like new-book smell and feel. Old books smell musty to me in a way that I'm not super crazy about. Ebooks aren't THE SAME but they have their own advantages.

[annathepiper]

Yeah--there are plenty of pro-print arguments I'm totally down with. The whole smell thing is just not one of 'em.

I totally get "I like [print|digital] because [reason X|reason Y|whatever]..." since there are indeed lovely reasons to prefer either. I start making frowny faces though when people on either side start pontificating on the matter!

[prettyshrub.livejournal.com]

I suspect this argument will be around as long as electronic and printed material are both available. :)

One thing though, you don't need to charge up paper in order to use it.

[annathepiper]

Sure, though this post is less about print vs. digital in general and more about me just being bemused by the whole "book smell" thing. I'm not trying to convince proponents on either side to change their opinion, since I know that won't work.

[prettyshrub.livejournal.com]

I know, I'm just teasing. :)

I'm sure some people don't enjoy the smell of old books the same way some of us don't enjoy the bitterness of certain vegetables (which, I understand, don't really taste bitter to those that like them).

[annathepiper]

This isn't exactly a topic I take teasing well on, I fear. *^_^*;;

[wrog]

Computers don’t smell

says someone who's never been in an IBM 3033 machine room.

[annathepiper]

Yeah well, love Buffy as I do, it wasn't exactly a shining bastion of "television perception of computer reality", vs. "actual computer reality". ;D

[wrog]

actually Buffy does pretty well.

... though I suppose given a scale that has Disclosure, Lawnmower Man, War Games, The Six Million Dollar Man, Space: 1999, UFO, and The Prisoner ("The General"), on it, it pretty much has to.

[annathepiper]

True enough. ;) I only gritted my teeth a time or two at computer treatment in Buffy!

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Blessings of synaesthesia. I get old book smell now from Courier typeface at Project Gutenberg. The worse the line breaks, the stronger the smell.

Of course my old book smell is the smell of my grandmother's glass fronted bookcase, including furniture polish, crumbling leather, and mice.

[annathepiper]

HEE. :D

Now see, that doesn't say "old book smell" to me, that says "AUGH MUST LOAD INTO SIGIL AND FIX ALL THE BREAKS SO I CAN STAND TO READ THIS"!

(Which I've been known to do to badly formatted ebooks.)

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but that tinkering with the font and the line breaks and such, is part of it. You can't just grab a slick modern book off a clean modern shelf. With the Gutenberg Courier, you have to gingerly pull it out from among others, trying not to tear dry spines, or dislodge the pine cones and such that Grandmother put on top of the row of books. This gives time to savor the smell, both the smell of the front section (largely furniture polish and vinegar and newsprint from the glass panels), and the smell of the leather as it powders out from the book you want and the adjoining ones you don't want, and finally the stronger whiff of the mice behind.

If it's lots of bad line breaks, that's like when the book isn't even standing up, but has been shoved in, on the top of one of the rows: a part of a volume thin enough to lie between it and the bottom of the next shelf, with one of its open corners projecting beyond the book-backs.

Drat Gutenberg, they've now got Lilith looking neat on screen; but I did get to mess with the line breaks to put that bit into this comment box. ;-)

[annathepiper]

:D :D :D

This entire comment is made of win and glory. How would you like your Internet packaged? I'll send that right over.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

;-)

Deliver by hand when you come for tea.

* adds to Friends List *

[annathepiper]

Why, thank you! Yay, tea! :)

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Wandering by in a foaf-y way, wondering if the actual *feel* of the thing makes any difference to you?

I like book smells, and they do recall childhood reading, but it isn't the primary difference for me between paper and screen. I process things differently depending on how they're presented. When I have print on paper, there are many ways to reassemble a piece of text in my mind - pattern on the page, color and smell of the paper, where I was when reading it and in what position I was sitting, what I used as a bookmark, the relationship of illustration to text, that sort of thing. I also ... move a lot? Talk to myself, kind of move very slightly through the rhythm of the structure, change position as the story affects me. A moving-your-lips-while-reading thing, only with all my body. It sets a thing in my memory. The story isn't just a story, but the animating spirit of a thing, time, and place.

When I read electronic text, I tend to be in one of a few places, in one of a couple of positions, looking at the same artificial light, using the same machine, holding my hands and head the same way. There's nothing in particular to remember about the experience of reading. In some sense, I guess this might make a story more "pure", but it's harder for me to keep the story in my memory as something distinct from other stories.

Sometimes I wonder if "it's the smell" isn't just shorthand for the whole experience of using a book.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

The moving-around thing is probably part of why I'm so attached to audiobooks. Talk about lacking smell.

Audiobooks have their own way of making a story go in you, where it's harder to stop and skip around, and you are more compelled to take something in the way the author meant you to have it. Well. Maybe not David Foster Wallace.

I do like my e-reader. Mostly for shorter things I will read over and over so I have them more memorized. A friendly, grubby little cue card full of fan fiction, Project Gutenberg, and poetry.

[annathepiper]

Now that I've actually got an audiobook of my own, I'm developing more of an appreciation. :D

I don't do audiobooks as much as full-cast audio dramas--I love the Big Finish Doctor Who audiodramas, as well as the Leviathan Chronicles podcast. But I've also got a couple of excellent audiobooks of the Amelia Peabody series and a couple of Patrick O'Brian's, just for the sheer joy of listening to the narration.

And a couple of Doctor Who audiobooks as well, for the sheer joy of listening to David Tennant switch back and forth between his natural accent and his Doctor voice!

Yay for fanfic and Project Gutenberg. (heart)

[annathepiper]

Hello and thank you for commenting!

There is a certain level of physical experience I find important in reading, much of which I expect is ingrained from growing up reading paperbacks. I've read ebooks in several different ways now--on several different devices as well as on my computer. And I can say that most definitely, my favorite way of doing it is on ereaders that best mimic the experience of reading a physical book.

So my preferred ereading experience is on an e-ink device, preferably one whose entire purpose is just to to show me that book. I don't want something with apps on it. Color e-ink would be nice for purposes of seeing the cover art, but it's optional. While I can and do read books on my phone in a pinch if my ereader's out of juice, I don't like that nearly as much--there's not enough text presented at once. And it's too easy to be distracted by checking email or Facebook or whatever.

I find that of the ereaders I've tried, too, my Nook SimpleTouch best wins for its physical weight being closest to that of a paperback. Plus I like that the cover opens like a book and I can hold it like one.