Fantastic Metropolis

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Forrest Aguirre

Besides being a book fondler (see previous response), I’m a book-sniffer. There is a great deal of history in the old dust and mold spores between the pages of a book. The scent of the University of Wisconsin’s library basement, for example, reeks with Africana and Victoriana. Books written for and bound by the German colonial government offices in East Africa have a distinctive smell—not unpleasant—of saltwater seeping through sun-dried brick buildings, with a hint of mangrove. I’ve wondered, while sniffing these texts, how many tsetse flies have shat upon their yellowed pages. Perhaps they hold latent trypanosomes that will one day awaken and send me to the soft recesses of sleeping sickness. Nevertheless, I can’t help myself, I am a book sniffer.

Hawk Alfredson & Mia Hanson

Mia says she always cleans the covers of used books just before she begins reading them. (She’s a little weird.)

Neal Asher

I read everything except the fiction itself, then place the book on one of the foot-high stacks on my bedside table. When I read, it is dependent not on order, but on my expectations.

Dale Bailey

I’m helpless not to read introductions, forwards, story notes—any editorial matter at all—immediately.

R. M. Berry

New books frighten me. I put them away on a shelf very rapidly, somewhere that I can forget about them completely but find them later. I like to find them years later, completely astonished that I own them. Usually at that point I can read them.

Richard Bleiler

Ahem. These are almost embarrassingly personal. Used: I start by smelling the book, yes, oh yes. Is there an aroma of perfume or tobacco or alcohol or cat urine or something? I continue by looking at the volume as a whole, and if it is marked or injured in any way I speculate about the cause of the injury. Was that scorch from a cigarette or a fireplace? Were those paint speckles from when the previous owner used a roller to paint the room but didn’t cover the titles? I look at pages for ownership marks or inscriptions or something that shows that the book was in other hands prior to mine. I look at the title page, getting some sense for the design and layout, then look at the plates, if the book has any. I enjoy the soft feel of the edges of used books: they aren’t dog-eared, but they aren’t so sharp that you can get paper cuts. I like running my fingers around the text block. Sometimes I open at random and read a sentence or two before starting at the beginning. New. I don’t have so many rituals, but I do enjoy the feel of the crisp paper, the way the spine is tight across the signatures.

Cuyler Brooks

I certainly notice if a book has an unusual odor. If it’s the odor of mildew, I treat it for that! Certain books on coated paper seem to have a nauseous odor. Some British books—most notably Eddison’s The Menzentian Gate—have a curious smoky odor. Old rag papers have a nice feel, and cloth bindings feel a lot better than leather or the modern plasticized paper. I am very nearsighted and often read in bed with my glasses off, so that I notice fibers or spots in the paper and details of font design.

Jay Caselberg

I smell books. I am more inclined to stroke them, though. Hold them in one hand and stroke the cover with the other like a treasured pet.

Jonathan Carroll

My father taught me how to “open” a book properly so that it would live longer—open it a few pages on either side and fold them down carefully and slowly, then do that working your way to the middle. Whether this works or not, it is a nice way to shake hands with a new book.

Michael Chabon

If they are old and have retained their dust jackets, I wrap them in a mylar sleeve.

Michael Cisco

I have sniffed books in my time, but not as part of a fixed protocol of book-buying (more like a pastime). When I buy books and bring them home, I set them aside in piles, depending on the kind of reading they represent (research, pleasure, subway). When I’ve read them, they all go onto a shelving pile. Once the shelving pile is a foot or two high, I alphabetize the books, measure the height of the pile, displace an equivalent amount of already-shelved books to make room for the new ones (my shelves are deep enough for double-stacking: the back rows are all filled, and now the fronts are filling up), then insert the new books in the proper places. In this way, I am able to find any book fairly swiftly. I derive from this operation, also, a profound sense of well-being. I don’t merely possess my books; they form a precisely-ordered system over which I preside. Looking at the books on my shelves, I enjoy their order.

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Ian Covell

Remove its dust wrapper while reading it, just in case you catch it against something or get some dirt on it by a moment’s inattention. If it’s paperback, encase it in plastic wrapper for the same reason.

Peter Crowther

I’m a keen book-sniffer, particularly where old books are concerned …and especially old comic books. Generally, I’m attracted by covers and designs, and once hooked, I check out a sample page in the middle of the book to sample the writing style (praying that, if I like the style, the page doesn’t detail the death of a main character!). I’m also a completist—thus certain imprints (ACE Doubles, Gold Medal, Ballantine, etc.) are purchased with little or no attention to the actual story or the author.

John Coulthart

If the book has a dust jacket I always remove it to see whether anything is printed on the boards.

Jack Dann

I always check that books I buy are properly bound, and, yes, in the case of used books, I check the smell of a book for mustiness.

Ellen Datlow

Nope. I just try to figure out where to put it in my very crowded apartment.

Alan DeNiro

If it’s stories or poems, I immediately go to the acknowledgements page and see where their work has been published; it helps give me a sense of where the collection fits into the larger fabric of literature.

L. Timmel Duchamp

My relationship to my books is both obsessive and possessive, which is to say that I and my books are in passionate possession of one another. I could, if I wished, compile a list of every volume that I’ve lost through lending to someone who could not be bothered to return it, a list stretching back to 1971. I own thousands of books, and they own me. When I purchase a book, I inscribe my name, the date, and the city in which I purchased it and place it in one of the areas of my home that is reserved for unread books. After I’ve read the book, I enter its particulars into a database and shelve it with the already-read books. It gives me extreme pleasure to look at the shelves of books read and know that I’ve read every one of them. Sitting in my library—a large, skylighted room that can be accessed only through a pair of French doors located on the far wall of my bedroom—I am conscious that I am the person I am at least partly through my having read the books on my library’s shelves. My response to my shelves of unread books, however, is ambivalent. On the one hand, the sight of my unread books both excites and stimulates me, assuring me, as it does, of an unending supply of pleasure. On the other hand, I am sufficiently aware of the finity of my lifespan that the sight of so many books I’ve committed myself to reading can sometimes make me anxious. I have a ritual for controlling the anxiety, but it’s very involved and would likely bore others to tears (as the mechanisms of obsession generally do).

Lawrence Dyer

Carrying it around, feeling the weight in anticipation of the read. Books in general are designed to be carried easily, meeting perfectly the evolutionary ergonomics of our hunter-gatherer past. In fact, buying books is satisfying because it is modeled on hunter-gathering. You go out to the bookstores, not knowing what you will find. You may come away disappointed and hungry that day, or you may find something superb that will sustain you for many a month.

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Carol Emshwiller

Some books smell better than others and some feel better than others. I don’t know why. I frequently open them back then front then back then front then middle in order to make sure they don’t get lopsided from only being opened in the beginning only in the front.

Brian Evenson

When I buy books, I bring them home and then put the stack next to me on the couch, carefully peel off any price tags, read the cover copy, glance at the contents, try to get a sense of the book as a book. Recently purchased books go on a special shelf and are either quickly read or sit on the shelf for several months unread until I decide to file them with my other unread books.

Tim Feeney

Not quite when I buy a book, but how I treat it after I’ve read it borders on ritualistic. I mark the calendar when I’ve finished a book, which I mainly started out of curiosity to see how many I read in a year. Only when I’ve finished the book does it go in the shelves (I keep unread books in the closet). Then I alphabetize by author, regardless of genre—Donald Antrim is next to Aurelius is next to Exotic Tropical Fishes by Herbert R. Axelrod—and then chronologically by date of publication. This is probably neurosis-free compared to some bibliophiles’ quirks. (Though if for some reason you want to talk about the smell of books, as referenced in your question, I could go on for a creepily long time…I have a copy of the collected Addison & Steele Spectator from 1854 [bought from Babbitt’s Books, Normal IL, US$35.00] that smells incredible, dusty and smoky and slightly mildewed and somehow noble. My 1952 hardcover of Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano [book club edition, seventy-five cents at a Bloomington IL library sale] still smells like the world’s mustiest basement—the mildew hits you even before you open the cover—but again, it’s very appealing. Possibly perverse. I wonder what a Gutenberg Bible smells like…)

Jeffrey Ford

If it’s a non-fiction book, I rarely ever read it from cover to cover. I usually start in the middle somewhere and then skip around until I can’t find a place I haven’t read before.

Karen Joy Fowler

I probably do usually smell the book, but not in a ritualistic way. My ritual consists of throwing it into the pile on my nightstand of books I plan to read soon, unless I’m actually going to read it, in which case I start pretty immediately.

Neil Gaiman

It’s personal and kind of embarrassing, and involves a tea ceremony, scented candles, and a highly paid blind chaperone. Er, make that “no”.

Stephen Gallagher

No, although I once held a 1920 copy of The Return of Tarzan in the steam from a kettle after a maggot crawled up out of the top of the spine and sat there watching me as I read.

Theodora Goss

The book must find its place. English literature is in roughly chronological order, with accommodation for preferences. Kipling, Haggard, and Conan Doyle, for example, prefer to be next to each other, and away from James. Foreign literature is geographic, beginning with Greece and ending with Japan. First, even before reading, I must make sure that the book is comfortable with its neighbors.

M. John Harrison

I read books with an exaggerated care, presumably as a result of childhood warnings to “respect” them (as if they’re rare objects, which maybe they were in lower middle class households in the UK in 1952, who knows). I often take the dust jacket off a new hardback, partly to have a look at the boards, partly so it doesn’t get damaged as I read. How sad is that?

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Barry Hughart

I open it fast and hard [in] at least four places, seeing how well it takes the strain. Then I read everything except the text. Then I either put it in the To Read pile or the Exchange at Bookman’s pile, which gets a lot on it because of illiterate or bullshit blurbs.

Rhys Hughes

I always wash my hands before reading a book that I have already decided is special. But I never dust my books, because this creates the illusion that the unread ones are equal to their more regularly consulted brothers and sisters. It is the responsibility of time and usage to maintain or dispel this distinction. I hate cramming volumes too tightly on shelves, though I might make an exception for literature which comes from the age of corsets. I no longer arrange my books chronologically. Although this is still less mundane than arranging them in alphabetical order, the comedy of interweaving books of different authors according to year has worn thin. I have a small model bookworm which rests on my books. I move it from book to book at infrequent intervals. I suppose I imagine it is reading them. This ritual is slightly original and somewhat irritating. I allow myself to sip coffee with a book, but never to eat oranges. I only read old books in bed.

Shelley Jackson

I hit myself in the mouth with it until I draw blood.

Harvey Jacobs

I never bit a book spine but it sounds delicious. If the books are used, I do give them a sniff or two and a look-over for stains, the source of which might be spine biter dribble.

Stephen Jones

I always take the jacket off and check the binding (especially Arkham House volumes). I also flip through second-hand books to check for signatures, annotations, letters, or interesting clippings. I’ve found all of these over the years. My favorites include discovering that the cheap copy of This Mortal Coil (Arkham) I bought with no dust jacket (I got a mint one later) had been annotated by Lady Cynthia Asquith herself, or the Canadian edition of Weird Tales that had been signed by Robert Bloch. Sometimes it’s just a newspaper review or contemporary postcard that had been used as a bookmark. My friend David Carson once picked up a copy of H. Russell Wakefield’s Arkham House collection Strayers From Sheol for 15 cents in a box outside a bookstore. That would have been a find in itself. However, it turned out to be Wakefield’s own copy, fully annotated by him!

Henry Kaiser

[I] leave it in a stack for a while (often forgetting where and which stack), then sometimes lose it when I need it then find it again and read, or put it on the shelf.

James Patrick Kelly

Not really, although when I read a hardcover, I always remove the dust jacket to keep from fraying it. Alas, sometimes I will then misplace the dust jacket and it will disappear, no doubt into that same nether region where unmatched black socks hide.

Rick Klaw

I’m a big fan of smelling books. Also, I will carry a newly acquired book from room to room in my house until I find it a home.

John Klima

Nothing for hardcovers. If I’m going to read it right away, I’ll remove the dust jacket and put it upside down on the shelf so it sticks out to my eye and I get to reading it. With paperbacks, new and used, I always smell them. New books remind of the summer between grade school and middle school when I discovered Stephen King short stories and Piers Anthony (maybe a little advanced—or even too explicit!—for my young mind, but my mother loved that I read). I would always gravitate to the spinning paperback rack in the grocery store or drug store (this was well before B&N infiltrated the world) and pore over the lurid covers, trying to find another King or Anthony. Whenever I smell a new book, it smells like that summer. Old books remind me of my grandmother and aunt (on my Dad’s side—his mom and sister), who were both great proponents of my reading. They introduced me to C. S. Lewis, Philip Jose Farmer, among others. They had all sorts of great “old” books that I could sit among and look at. Used books remind of those two women whom I love dearly.

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Jay Lake

Nothing serious. If it’s a hardback, I remove the dust jacket. I read the jacket copy at that time. I find a bookmark, usually the sales slip. When I’m ready to start reading the book, I look at all the forewords, introductions, etc., and will often read literally everything including the copyright statement and printing history—all of those tell me something about the context of the book.

David Langford

Er (glances nervously from side to side), doesn’t everyone have a quick sniff? New books are rarely aromatically interesting, but certain US paper from the first half of the 20th Century has matured to exude a waft of Essential Book. Check out, say, the 1941 first edition of John Collier’s Presenting Moonshine or almost any early printing of James Branch Cabell. Did Jack Vance never describe an alien society where book-sniffing was a major branch of art appreciation? Why not? Another small ritual consists of either gently removing penciled-in second-hand prices with an art eraser, or shouting FUCKWIT! at prices scrawled in ink. Peering into the central gutter of small-press paperbacks to look for that odd hint of fluorescent glow often associated with POD paper stock, and to estimate whether I’ll be able to read the bloody thing without forcing it open so far as to blaspheme against the Book Gods by creasing the spine.

Des Lewis

I smell it, I riffle through it, I catch odd paragraphs and blurbs, I make myself feel as if I am at the start of a love affair. I may be disappointed in the long run. But I have to give the book every chance. I often stow it for a while, with only the spine showing. Its potential is almost as powerful as its actual power (often, sadly, in retrospect, more powerful!). I think it was me that said I bit books. I was lying. I do, however, anticipate that biting books would not be as mad as it sounds, and could be quite pleasurable and efficacious. But doubting my own sanity, sometimes, as I do, I’m not taking any risks by acting mad, which biting a book would certainly seem.

Nick Mamatas

I’ll read all the front and back matter right after buying a book, but never before—I depend on cover and author’s name for making browsing purchases. The only other ritual is that I keep favorite books off the bookshelf. They have to be in some other pile, on the floor or desk. Bookshelves to me are like little prisons for prose that disappoints.

Javier A. Martinez

I hate to buy damaged books. Even in used bookstores I won’t purchase a book that’s been “read” to the point that the spine is broken and the cover damaged (unless it’s something I’ve been looking for for a long time). I always give the book a sniff, too.

Farah Mendlesohn

Sit them on the shelf and contemplate them. Once shelved properly, they don’t count as new any more and the pleasure shifts from the excitement of acquisition to the reassurance of ownership (books are the only objects I’m truly materialistic about).

Michael Moorcock

I either draw my bookplate into it or stick a bookplate in, depending on what’s available or to what degree I’m going to treasure a book. I have to say I have no special reverence for books as material objects. My early experience was as a journalist when one was constantly ripping bits out of magazines and books and dumping the remains in the waste paper disposal.

Cheryl Morgan

I try to find time to read it.

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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.

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Anna Tambour

Delaying gratification. Not always, but usually. Certainly, never having the first real sit-down with any book at a time when it would get distracted attention.

Jeffrey Thomas

I’ve never heard of biting books, but I love to crack a book and smell its crisp inky whiteness if new, its ivory warm attic mustiness if old.

Scott Thomas

I’m a book smeller, I admit it.

William Thompson

The only ritual I go through, besides a physical examination of the book, is the application of brodart covers to protect the jackets. However, I should mention that all my more valued books are kept in a well-ventilated, as much as possible temperature controlled room with the blinds drawn to protect the books from potential environmental damage, such as light. Similarly, the lamps within this room are incandescent, and remain off unless I am needing to locate one of the books.

Jeff Topham

What I love about used books is that they are saturated with the lives they’ve lived before. They smell of coffee or cigarettes or curry. I’ve found books that contained pressed flowers or pieces of paper containing scribbled notes that time has transformed into an unintelligible cipher.

Lisa Tuttle

No “rituals,” but I do sniff the pages of my new books, and always slip off the jacket to see what the binding is like.

Alan Wall

I usually lose it, though this is temporary. It seems to slip off to introduce itself. I have no idea how many books there are in this house—a lot. People remark upon it. If books don’t furnish a room, then we have a lot of radically unfurnished rooms. After a week or so, the book re-appears, from under a table or behind a shelf. Ready to be opened. One of the crew now.

Michael Walsh

Take the jacket off, look at the binding.

Liz Williams

Well, I usually lose it immediately, but that’s inadvertent.

Neil Williamson

I do sometimes smell a new book. I often run my thumb along the unopened edge, feeling the thickness of pages. If I’ve bought more than one book, I’ll arrange them in a stack or spread them out and work out which I’m going to read first; maybe I’ll read the first paragraph or so of each and see which grabs me. Before I start reading the text, I read everything else: every word of title, author’s name, blurb, and quotes on the cover and spine; the copyright information, and who printed it; what other books the author has written. I might read this information two or three times before starting the story—it’s as if once I start reading the thing it is no longer the new book as artifact, it is now simply a container for the story within, and the story becomes the thing that is important. I’ll procrastinate more—noting what page number the story starts on, and on what page number it finishes, so I can use this information to keep tabs on how far through I am. I might sample random passages by flicking through and reading from the place where my gaze alights, knowing that I’ll easily have forgotten what I’ve read when I get that far in the story. Only then, when I’ve exhausted the range of possible things you can do with a book, will I start to read it.

Richard Winters

I will usually write my name and the date in it—defacing it just enough so that it’s mine.

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Paul Witcover

Good God, what kinds of weirdos are out there? Don’t tell me if you bite or smell books! I don’t want to know!

Gene Wolfe

My ritual with a new book is to open it carefully in the middle first, then a quarter of the way in, and then three-quarters. I was taught to do this at Edgar Allan Poe Elementary School, and I have never stopped. If the book is used—and I buy a lot of used books —I page through to see whether the previous owner left anything between the pages or made marginal notes. I love notes made in books and things found in books.

Tamar Yellin

I feel its weight, and flip through its pages to feel the weight and quality of the paper. The smell is also important. At some point—unable to help myself—I will check how many pages it has. This seems to answer some deep psychological need, like establishing how many miles there are to cover on a journey, whether or not it’s meant to be a journey of pleasure.

Zoran Živković

(a) I leaf through it to check if there are any blank pages. One of the most traumatic and heart-stopping experiences for me as a reader was to face a blank page on the most exciting spot. (b) I leaf through it to check if there are any bills between the pages, left there by a previous, careless reader.