(no subject)
Book smell.
It’s always there when I read.
That subtle combination of paper, ink, and glue when I crack open the pages. It’s something I look forward to in a new book, or even an old one. Sometimes the paper is pulpy and sharp-smelling, a wrinkle in the nose, and sometimes the paper smells clean and scrubbed, refined like sugar. And expensive books smell different than cheap books. Not always better, but different.
The sense of smell is closely linked to the hippocampus and the amygdala in the brain, which are themselves linked to emotion and emotional memory, so it shouldn’t be surprising that as I read a book the particular smell of it becomes part of the story that is written on the pages. The smell of a certain book becomes a flash-memory, of the setting and characters. Sometimes the scent takes me back to the version of me I was when I read it first, how I thought and felt at the time.