I confess, be it allergies, genetics or lack of practice, I am terrible at identifying smells. (My brother is amazing at this.) I went to a wine tasting with someone who was big into perfume and she was able to identify all sorts of things by smelling the wine. I got as far as one of them smelling like scotch (the others smelled like wine). She was able to explain to me that since scotch is often aged in oak and so is some wine, that's where the similarity came into play.
So, all of this is to say, when people bemoan the fact that ebooks don't smell like books, I don't quite get it. I mean I get that books smell like paper and ebooks smell like whatever electronic device you are reading them on, but I don't associate the smell of books with the experience so I don't miss it. (Unless the book smells like smoke in which case I have to air it out. Yes, despite my smell sense deficiency - obnoxious and poignant smells I may not be able to identify, but I can totally be annoyed by).
But for those of you more attached to the way your reading material smells, well, now there's a perfume for you.
<em>h/t to the Politics and Prose tweeters who passed this link on.</em>
Rants About New (and old) Things
