I want to be your favorite book. I want you to run your fingers and hands over my pages, memorizing every line…..and while other people will never take the time to read me, I want you to never put me on a shelf where I can collect dust. I’m a first edition, first printing, and a rare find…..for I am the only one in existence.
I want to be your favorite book. I want you to move your eyes over my words, absorbing every nuance and curve of my language…..and while others will never find the courage to learn and understand me, I want your longing to penetrate the essence of my dialogue and allow it to form images of paradise in your mind. I’m a fantasy, an epic, and a story yearning to be told….as beauty deepens when colors fade and creases appear in places most touched.
I want to be your favorite book. I want you to breathe in the scent of my ink and linen as you carry me to bed at night, falling asleep with me in your arms…..and hold me in your lungs, the taste of each phrase fresh in your memory. I am nostalgic…..and patient….as I wait for the flip of a page when, again, you spread me open to our story….yours and mine.
I want to be your favorite book. I want you to sit with me until you can hear my voice in the deepest parts of your soul, and dance with me in every square inch of your being…..for as your secrets dissolve themselves in the world of me, my dreams come to rest in the pulse of you. I am a laugh, a sigh, and original song…..and I will take you to the highest mountains and deepest seas. I will take you anywhere you want to go and places you’ve never been. I will transform all that you see…..your life. You.
All you have to do is pick me up.
Jeanie Unbottled 
“I like to sniff books. Stick my nose in the spine and take a good whiff. Preferably when no one’s watching. Especially new books, but really old books have their distinct bouquet. I swear, I can almost get drunk browsing in a used bookstore.”
(I *may* have included the above in an actual dating site profile…)
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Funny 😅😉😊
The aroma of paper, ink, and book bindings is definitely a pleasure. I believe my first love was freshly printed zerox copies in grade school…..followed closely by my collection of Trixie Beldon and Black Stallion books.
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Oh, yeah! The heady aroma of old-school, purple mimeograph? That’s never going to fade from memory. 😂
On a more serious note, this post was quite enchanting.
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I once did electrical work in a school storeroom that was filled with the kids’ new books–Scholastic?–the books we could order through school, back in the innocent day.
Their smell was of pure potential, of excitement and newness and enthusiasm. It was sweet like blossoms, really. No metaphor. I have smelled books in a lot of environments: coffee-seasoned stores, dry tannic libraries, funereal musty basements.
Also in the nakedness of de novo assembly, signatures folded and sewn, scents of paper and linen and beeswax, the faintly sour smell of archival glue brushed out on the spine and endpapers.
These happy kids’ books are not archival quality, not by any stretch. They’re built to the price point that will get them into as many eager hands, before as many eager eyes, as is possible. But I am certain that the publishers spend a little extra to sweeten the glue. And why not? Why not make these books as pleasing as possible, why not make them smell sweet? Their palates will mature, of course, and later they might prefer mushroomy to sweet. How wonderful, now, to meet them where they are.
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