The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd

There is a brilliant moment in the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Giles explains to Willow that his problem with computers is “their smell.”

She replies, roughly, “But they have no smell.”

“Exactly. And smell is one of the most important senses there is.”

Apparently, with a hat tip to The New Yorker’s Book Bench, others have decided that it’s not the scent of the book so much as the scent with the book that should matter.