Books Smell Like Old People

"Books smell like old people" 

- High School student in New Haven

There is an "Old Person" smell 

( a grassy or greasy odor ) 

but books only carry it psychologically to young people.

{As the skin grows weaker, its natural oils become oxidized more quickly. 

 Fatty acids, which are secreted by the sebaceous glands, react to the oxygen in the air to form nonenal. 

Because it isn't water soluble, nonenal can remain on the skin despite washing, 

even remaining after intense scrubbing. 

Therefore, the smell persists, even in extremely clean environments.}

 Certain ingredients can also help combat nonenal, such as persimmon extract and Japanese green tea.

But let's get back to young people's attitude towards reading books

Teenagers, addicted as they are to texting and FB, probably read more words than ever ...

just in shorter, concentration- reducing, tidbits. 

When they become twelve or thirteen, kids often stop reading seriously. 

The boys veer off into sports or computer games, 

the girls into friendship in all its wrenching mysteries and satisfactions of favor and exclusion.

 Much of their social life, for boys as well as girls, is now conducted on smartphones, 

where teenagers don’t have to confront one another. 

Oh, the terror of eye contact! 

 A recent summary of studies cited by Common Sense Media indicates 

that American teenagers are less likely to read “for fun” at seventeen than at thirteen. 

 I know that reading literature, history, science, and the rest of the liberal-arts canon 

helps produce three-dimensional human beings. 

Such beliefs defy trying to prove them with statistics. 

Common sense is often not a matter of math but of logic.

But how is a taste for such reading created in the first place?

What Do You Think Of All This?