You would think that as someone that spent something like 17 years (18! I had that 5th year of college you get stuck with if you change majors, and that, conveniently, no one remembers to tell you about!) in school (and yes, I am including kindergarten, because don’t try to tell me “sharing” isn’t a hard thing to learn; kindergarten totally counts) I’d be better about that thing that all students do called “procrastinating” and dealing with the anxiety that comes along with it. To wit: my French teacher assigned plus de l’homework last week, and I waited until last night before I was leaving for French class to do it. And yes, it definitely inspired dream-sweats of “Oh my god, I didn’t do my homework, I’ll try to do it in class so she won’t notice. OH NO, SHE FOUND OUT.” But I haven’t learned. I repeated a mantra the whole way home from last night’s class, a la Bart Simpson, “I will do my homework early this week. I will do my homework early this week.” What is French for “lol yeah right”?
In related news, French class continues to kick my le ass. After class, one of the other students told me my accent was “like, perfect” which was, like, awesome. Rachel, the teacher, is insistent that we don’t write things down, that we get used to the sounds, the pronunciation, that writing it down is not learning to speak the language. She’s working to get us off the page.
And speaking of page (check out that segue!), over the weekend when I wasn’t busy drowning my liver, I read an essay by author Oliver Sacks in the NYTimes Book Review section called “Reading the Fine Print.” This quote in particular stood out to me, “I do not want a Kindle or a Nook or an iPad…I want a real book made of paper with print — a book with heft, with a bookish smell, as books have had for the last 550 years, a book that I can slip into my pocket or keep with its fellows on my bookshelves where my eye might alight on it at unexpected times.” This sums up my entire opinion on the death of the printed book (alleged death, as I am single handedly keeping my local Barnes & Noble in business) and the rise of those awful, awful contraptions known as e-readers. I love books. I love the feel of them, the soft whisping noise the pages make as you turn them, and most of all, I love the smell.
So when my friend Audrey (the comment-artist known as Gary Oldman) alerted me to the existence of a perfume THAT SMELLS LIKE BOOKS, I just about lost my mind.
It’s called Paper Passion, byt Steidl, with packaging is by Karl Lagerfeld. And oh my god, the packaging. It’s a book with stunning orange pages, notched in the shape of the bottle.
The write up says,”This is an opportunity to celebrate all the gloriosensuality of books, at a time when many in the industry are turning against them. The idea is that is should relax you, like when you read a book, to a level of meditation and concentration. Paper Passion has evolved into something quite beautiful and unique. To wear the smell of a book is something very chic. Books are players in the intellectual world, but also in the world of luxury.” Okay, that’s a little frou-frou (gloriosensuality!?), and at $98 a bottle to smell like dusty paper, it’s probably not something I’d buy myself as a necessity. But I wouldn’t kick it out of the house if it somehow appeared in my Christmas stocking.
