The smell of a new book, especially expensive coffee table books, can be divine — a heady mix of printing ink and paper. Old books, on the other hand, can immediately bring to mind the attic or garage in which they were stored, their pages quietly soaking up the aroma of the passage of time itself: a distinctive musk of damp, dust and mildew.
While the new book smell is delightful, it’s the old book smell that evokes the strongest memories. If you want to recall the daring summer of your 13th year when you discovered that stack of ancient National Geographics on the summer cottage shelf behind the board games, and pored over the risqué photographs of naked people and gawped at the old fashioned ads, then that smell will bring it all fondly back, along with a discomforting sense of arousal.
On the other hand, the two-volume set comprised of Playboy’s Host and Bar Book and Gourmet recipe guide from 1971 smells just exactly how one would imagine the Playboy Club to smell on Monday morning: reeking of stale cigarette smoke. If you ever secretly wanted to be a Bunny, in bobble tail and fishnets — or you longed to slink about in evening wear, jewels and a bouffant, or a white turtleneck and velvet sport coat sipping on cocktails with Heff in the hope of getting laid, then this book will not make you whimsically tumescent; it will put you right off.
In the epic battle for olfactory dominance, Rive Gauche and Aramis have sadly lost to Dunhill and Silk Cut.
Playboy Cooler
1 ¼ oz golden Jamaican rum
1 ¼ oz Jamaican coffee liqueur
3oz pineapple juice
2 teaspoons lemon juice
Cola drink
1 slice pineapple
Shake rum, coffee liqueur, pineapple juice and lemon juice well with ice. Strain into pre-chilled tall 14oz glasses. Add ice to fill glass to in inch from the top. Add cola. garnish with pineapple slice. Serve with long straw, as at the London Playboy Club.
Playboy’s Host & Bar Book, Thomas Mario, A Playboy Press Book, 1971
