Comments on: scratch-and-sniff e-books

By: emma

emma — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:24:18 +0000

frankly, that sounds a bit dumb. i live in london, here we don’t make fuss over the smell of books. i only desire to smell of sweet pea and that is all.

By: booktwo.org Notebook » Errata as Metadata

booktwo.org Notebook » Errata as Metadata — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:26:08 +0000

[...] Even if you don’t want to go down the route of scratch’n’sniff ebooks, we have to recognise that books aren’t just the lit. They are an experience. Google is getting it wrong. Can we do better? [...]

By: Catherine Czerkawska

Catherine Czerkawska — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 20:28:55 +0000

Hmm. I think synthetic musty book would be as inadequate as any other synthesised scent – or flavour for that matter. Must confess to being a bit of a devotee of the scent of musty old books though. But I’m not averse to e-books either and agree with you that they will take off, especially in an academic context. At the moment my current favourite old book is an little eighteenth century Old Testament with a tooled leather cover, with birds and flowers on it – and yes, I suppose when I take it out of its box to look at it, it’s the scent of it that really gets to me. But it’s like the patina on a piece of furniture. You couldn’t really fake it adequately, and if you tried, it wouldn’t be quite the same.