Reference point
Open a book just out of its shrink-wrap and smell the spine.
Do this before you read on. An entry only works when you have just smelled the thing.
Sharp, slightly pungent, with a solvent note and a layer of dry paper. Nothing sweet.
It is almost the opposite of an old book. A new book is the smell of ink and glue still evaporating; an old book is the smell of paper breaking down.
It is also short-lived. After a few weeks of being opened, most of the solvent has gone.
How to smell it
Smell the spine first — the glue is concentrated there. Then smell the page surface in the middle. The two areas differ clearly, which is how you tell the glue from the ink.
Why this one is hard
Because many people call both “book smell” without separating them. Setting a new book and an old one side by side is the quickest way to see they are unrelated.
Scientific note
Offset printing ink contains hydrocarbon solvents and modified vegetable oils, which keep evaporating for weeks after printing. The spine glue is usually a hot-melt resin that gives off a small amount of organic compounds while new. It is the smell of an unfinished process rather than of a material at rest.
In Vietnamese life
Peeling the shrink-wrap off a new book and smelling it is a familiar gesture for readers in Vietnam, and it often comes up in writing about reading habits — one of the few smells talked about openly as a pleasure.