Smelling pages of a new book

Before starting a new book, there is a primitive pleasure of smelling it. Open the covers, bring the pages close to your nose, and inhale. That faintly sweet, faintly chemical fragrance is the printed word's equivalent of a handshake.

A new book smells of promise, announcing itself with the crisp confidence of something not yet unleashed on to the world. Its pages seem to bloom before your intake.

There is chemistry behind this seduction. Paper, printing inks, adhesives and coatings release volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which produce that distinctive fresh-book smell. Their precise cocktail varies with manufacturing materials.


The nose detects these molecules, while the brain's olfactory pathways maintain unusually intimate connections with regions involved in memory and emotion. Hence, a sniff can summon the excitement of childhood bookshops, school prizes or long afternoons spent reading.

A new book offers an unusual luxury: anticipation of pleasure before its actual consumption. That's why the first sniff is so delicious. You are smelling a pleasure that has not yet begun, and one that no e-reader, however clever, can reproduce.