"The problem, M. Proust, is we cannot dip the book in the tea, with the effect the same."

You first spied each other at the library, or the indie bookstore, or over a rack of yellowing hardcovers at a second-hand store. The attraction is undeniable. It’s time to make a move. Entice your beloved by smelling like the thing he or she most desires. Make yourself smell like a book.

“Book smell” is now a thing in the perfume world, like vanilla or sandalwood. In the last few years, dozens of products have appeared on the market to give your home or person the earthy scent of a rare book collection.

Sweet Tea Apothecaries sells Dead Writers Perfume, which promises to evoke the aroma of books old enough for their authors to have passed to the great writers’ retreat in the sky. Perfumer Christopher Brosius’s “In the Library” product line makes your home and body smell just like that. The high-end fragrance Paper Passion claims to capture the “unique olfactory pleasures of the freshly printed book,” though for roughly $200 per bottle it’s a lot cheaper to just buy a freshly printed book...