Why books smell so good, and why it transports us

Getting your nose into a good book may have more to do with your snozz than you might realise - with an expert noting specific smells act on our experiences of what we read, and are powerful communicators.

Saturday Morning talked with Dr Jo Burzynska, a New Zealand wine writer, academic and expert on the intermingling of sensory experiences about why inhaling the air between the pages can carry us away.

In wine tasting, smell is very important - and inextricably intertwined with the flavour, but Burzynska's passion for the sense goes far beyond that.

"It's something I've been fascinated by my whole life. Particularly in Western culture, it's very much undervalued ... it's not seen as a serious sense that can bring us knowledge."

She remembers the smell of her grandparents house, and the particular smell of the piano in their music room.

"It takes you so powerfully back. Your sense of smell is connected directly to the limbic system, which is connected with emotions and memories, so that's why we can smell something and it takes us right back there.

"Sometimes you smell something and you get a powerful sensation - you can't put your finger on where you smelt it before, but suddenly you're back decades ... you can have an olfactory imagination and these powerful memories"

Burzynska will give a talk as part of the WORD festival in Christchurch in August, and has been sniffing out stories, from the scent of Shakespeare, to re-creations of book smells in an age of digital reading.

It's not uncommon for booklovers to feel a strong connection to the smell and feel of the bound fans of paper they take to bed, carry around in their purses or stack on their shelves, with different varieties emitting different scents.

"It might be generational, I know that I personally have a strong relationship to the smell of books," Burzynska says.

"An old book, that just smells so delicious. [There's] almost an edible smell to those books, and you feel like you're smelling history as well, there's that musty, there's the sweetness - kind of vanillin smells.

"It's interesting, research... has found that people - especially over 35, feel that the smell of a book helps them become more immersed in the experience of reading. And that whole multi-sensory experience of reading is very important to them ... the touch of the paper and very much the smell of the book - which a lot of people bring up."

She notes an increased interest in the smell of books, as we've gone digital.

"And [that] appears to have fuelled a rise in people making fragrant candles that smell like libraries or books. Which can possibly fill the void now a lot of people are reading on kindles and reading ebooks."

Some of the most common smells we might encounter between the pages are chocolate, vanilla, woody musty tangs, leather, and acidic vinegary notes.

"Chocolate is something that quite a lot of people describe the smell of books as, it's part of the decomposition of lignin in the paper," Burzynska says.

"Sometimes it's been bad - I recall books where, probably it's the glue, that kind of give that fishy smell and it's like ugh."

Smelling close to the spine can give a different smell from the pages, as the scents from the binding glue are stronger there.

"Books smell different depending on what they've been made [of], the paper, what the paper's been made of the ink, the glue the cover materials, and how it's been stored as well, and these change ... older books will smell different to newer books."

"Basically the smell of an old book is the smell of it decomposing. An old book is a lot more fragrant than a new book. And the new books can be smelling more of the glues and the inks."

And leather-bound books emanate those rich leathery smells.

Burzynska would love for people to be more aware of scents and to enjoy them.

"I guess I'm on a bit of a mission to get people to kind of open their noses, and smell more and pay the sense of smell more attention and take it seriously."

Her doctoral research looked at how we experience and taste wine depending on what our other senses are also telling us.

"If you're listening to a piece of music it will affect the way you're perceiving the glass of wine that you're tasting or the food that you're eating," she says.

"The way our senses interconnect - If we're listening to something we're also smelling something, we might be tasting something and the way that those experiences are interacting, they affect each other, our perception of the individual thing.

"We can't just separate out the senses, they're always working together. Which means that when poor old smell gets sidelined ..!

The implication is that we miss key notes to the experiences passing us by, or we don't get the whole picture.

"It's got such power, and it's not just limited to individuals," she says. "A lot of people think it's such a personal thing, we can't communicate anything with it, but I disagree.

Burzynska has created a collection of 'olfactory portraits', scents made based on a series of interviews she carried out with a range of people, about their smell memories. It will be exhibited from 23 August at Rei Gallery in Lyttelton.

She has also created a scent evocative of the Christchurch 'smellscape'.

Information can be passed on via smell, and it can be meaningful, she insists.

"People can relate to that, people do get the information.

"People have these experiences, and it's not so individual that you can't communicate about it and you can't actually convey some powerful information between people via smell."

Burzynska says it's an exciting time for smell research, with particular interest from the heritage sector, including research into how to capture the smell of a book, and how to archive those smells.

As well as books, she also confesses to being "a great fan of sniffing cellars too".

"Smells are there all the time, we can't ignore those, they're part of our multi-sensory every day experience - they're also part of aesthetic experience as well."