Just this week, I discovered that there’s a word for the faint, vanilla scent of the pages of old books. It’s biblichor, a relatively new word created in a similar way to petrichor (the scent of earth after rain). Biblichor is a combination of biblio (from the Greek biblíon, meaning book) with ichor (golden fluid that flows in the veins of the immortals). I have always loved new words —collecting them like seashells, copying them carefully into my notebook — and this one is particularly delightful.
On Friday, research for my current writing project took me to a library, my favourite one of all. I spent four years as a student in Bristol (studying first English Literature, then Poetry). In those days I was often to be found holed up at a small desk by the window in the ugly concrete block that was the Arts and Social Sciences Library. It was an inelegant building — scruffy, busy and often warm, but it soothed me. There was something beguiling about being surrounded by so many words, by so much knowledge.
It wasn’t until years later, when I took my toddlers to choose books one summer afternoon, that I discovered beautiful Bristol Central Library just down the hill. With its sweeping stone staircase, vaulted ceilings and leaded windows, this library is an oasis of hidden grandeur. In the atrium are rows of wooden desks surrounded by ordered bookshelves, and cabinets of card catalogues. It is still, silent, cool and calm.
Friday was my first library visit since 2019, when the world turned upside-down. Sitting at a desk, I took a book from the pile in front of me and idly turned its pages. My thoughts drifted, as if floating upwards to the sky beyond the glass ceiling. I breathed in deeply. There it was — that dusky, almond-sweet aroma.
Biblichor.
Thank you for reading,
Laura x