DO YOU SMELL?

Book or Kindle

I try not to be Luddite in my thinking about new technology. I do. I try to be open to change, a little. Ok, so I’ve never grown out of being a 70’s hippy and I am a creature of habits and those habits established over long time. But I do try to keep an open mind about the new. After all, I am a teacher of high school kids and it would not do to be of the ark and not knowing what they are talking about . Imagine my surprise then when this week one of the fifteen year old girls in my class confessed that bookshop owners might think her visits to their shop a bit strange as she flicks through the pages of new books and breathes in the scent of them. ‘I love the smell of new books,’ she said, a little guiltily.

Smell is not my sense of choice. My olfactory tool is a bit blunt to look at and a bit blunt in its operation, too. So, I am telling one of my sons this today, about a bookish fifteen your old girl sniffing the insides of new books. I know he likes books, though he is particular. He is an art student and funds are always lower then they could be. He admits that he can understand this pupil’s fascination with the smell of the pages of books, though for my son it is the smell of old books that he enjoys - maybe that has something to do with economics, I don’t know.

I don’t get it. Not the smell of them. But I accept that there is clearly some appeal in sticking your nose between the covers of yesterday’s blockbusters and today’s new bestsellers-to-be - for them what have sensitive hooters.

And this brings me to my question to you: what does your Kindle smell of? Do you hold it to your nose and breathe in the scent of it? Will it have a different smell when it is old and dog-eared? Will the new Kindle have a smell built into it? Is the lack of a smell perhaps an advantage? You tell me.