I can’t agree more with JC Hutchins, I may be a fossil too.
I have always been a reader, for years I carry books with me, even, there was a time in my life that I wasn’t allowed in the School Library on class hours. I use to get there, hide and read. I got kick out of class for read books instead of paying attention to class.
I remember at that time, that if a book smells was a bad thing, if you will have said then that the book you were reading was smelly my mother would have told me to put it on the sun so it loose that smell.
I read my first ebook from Peanut press around 1997-1998, and I have been reading e-books since then, more than 90% of my annual reading is electronic, and I love the fact that I can carry many books, and read many more without any additional weight, additionally there is no smell.
Since the boom of e-Books people that is afraid of this new technology has been talking about the smell of the books, people apparently now cares that the book smell, and a book that smell is a better read.
I should say, that I continue thinking that books that doesn’t smell are better, but who I am to say that.
My question to all that people that suddenly need the smell of books, it is really the image of the library full of books, like the one I dreamed I would had someday, or it is the fear of the new technology, the fear that you might like the fact that you can bring with you all those books you have want to carry all your life.
Amazon, or Sony or Apple may end up designing an e-book reader that produce the mystic book smell that people is referring too, in the mean time, I continue expecting from the book I am reading that has no smell but instead a great content, I continue hoping to felt in love with the pages, the story the characters, I continue to be able to get captured in the story, smell free.