Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Grant Barrett said
Nothing like that old-book smell. And if you open up an old volume and think you detect notes of vanilla, there's a good reason. That intoxicating scent is the result of lignin, a chemical compound in plants used for making paper. It has a molecular structure similar to that of vanilla.

C S Lewis pointed out that humans have a tendency to start in some hobby with a love of the thing itself, and learn afterward to love the actions and sensations that come with it.   Readers love to read; but they also begin to love the smell of books, the slight crackle of a new hardback opening for the first time, and the feeling (if you're old enough) of cutting pages with a knife or letter opener.   (I'm barely old enough; printers these days never leave the pages untrimmed, but it used to be routine.)

Likewise a painter may start with a love of portraying some scene, but he learns to love the smell of the paint, the sound of stretching canvas, the feel of a knife against the palette.     A cabinet maker tends to like the smell of fresh-cut wood and the feel of a sharp saw in properly cured rosewood.   And so on.

Lewis' point at the time was that there's a danger in letting this go so far that one "forgets one's first love", so to speak.   If you start as a lover of reading, but your interest in collecting fine books and first editions leads you on until you've forgotten to read and care only for the collecting, then you've lost something valuable.   But he would add (and in any case I believe) that there's nothing but an innocent good in the pleasures themselves.

It's oft bemoaned that reading on-line deprives us of these pleasures.   I imagine, though, that other pleasures will arise to take their place.   I'm not very worried about it.