Fantastic Metropolis

Intro · Likes · Rituals · Necessity
Examples · Memories · Bios

Darren Nash

Guilty as charged—I smell them. I also stare at the front cover trying to pick out nuances of design that might be important in the story. And then I place it on my shelf in alphabetical order of author and chronological order of publication date.

Richard Eoin Nash

The procedure is anterior to the purchase. In most cases there is little opportunity to relate to it in any sensual way because most books are predictable in design and manufacture. In a few cases there is an opportunity of a visual or tactile experience, and it is because of that very experience that I moved to purchase the book.

Vera Nazarian

Meeting a book for the first time is the one instance when human beings act exactly like dogs, and I am no different. Good thing a book’s rear end is generally clean. I tend to sniff a book all over and have been known to hump upon occasion.

Lance Olsen

I check the number of pages. The back cover. The first page. Then I carry it around with me through the house for several minutes, entering each room, until it feels like its mine.

Milorad Pavić

Once upon a time, the books of my childhood had a nice smell, like biscuits or something. Now they have lost it. However, I still smell books before opening them. For some books I use a kind of divination before starting to read. It is a very old procedure well known in the fifteenth century and earlier. You open the book by putting your fingernail inside and count down the number of lines on the opened page equal to the day (date) of your birth. This is your own life line. Read it and it could have some specific meaning to you personally. Never repeat this ritual in the same book.

Justina Robson

I put it on the shelf. I may not read it for years, although I mean to. I’m starting to realize that owning a book is not the same as having read it.

Luís Rodrigues

I too count myself among the ranks of the book-sniffers, and few smells are comparable to the atmosphere inside a second-hand bookshop. If knowledge had a smell, that would be it. Once I started thinking about this reply, however, I realised that I obsessively check any book I’m reading for damage. It’s not a ritual, it’s compulsive. I stop and turn the book over in my hands, inspecting the spine for creases and the cover for the slightest scratch mark. Years ago, I used to inscribe name and date of purchase on the frostispieces of all books I bought, but I dropped that nasty habit in my obsession with keeping them in pristine condition. I also love the plain but honest look of a hardcover sans dustjacket. Maybe there’s something vaguely erotic about undressing the book, I don’t know…

Mary Doria Russell

Dear God. They bite and smell them? Is this some kind of sexual practice that has escaped my notice? What a concept…As an anthropologist and as a novelist, books have always been my tools. I treat them like a mechanic treats a set of socket wrenches. I look for something that will do the job, stand up to heavy use, and not cost too much. When I buy out of print books, I make a special effort to buy the ones in crummy condition, because they’re good enough for my purposes. This leaves the Very Fine in Very Fine Cover books for people who are looking for a different kind of relationship with them.

Lucius Shepard

I rarely buy used books except online. I don’t like bookstores or libraries. Irrational, I suppose. I do like old travel books, especially ones relating to the Far East, so I occasionally will go into a shop specializing in same. I don’t care how the book looks, smells, tastes, etc.—I’m after content.

Delia Sherman

I’m greedy. I just open up and plunge in. Oh, I always read the cover copy, even though I know (because I’ve written [cover copy]) that it has very little to do with the actual book I’ll be reading. I’m not sure why, since I loathe being told what to think of something. Perversity, I expect.

Mike Simanoff

Newly acquired books end up in piles on the kitchen table. I eye them routinely, flip through them, delight in their promise. Sometimes I read them. I need to be constantly reminded of their presence. Eventually the table-books are replaced with new arrivals and transplanted to the vicinity of a bookcase. That is a different story.

Peter Straub

I sort of sling ‘em around, pile them up, gloat over their insides and outsides, take little bits out of them to see how they taste, that sort of thing. I sniff old books, not new books.