Stinky Books

I got quite a few books on our trip to Baltimore and read one of them last night. It turned out to be a reread; although by 50 pages in I knew I'd read it before in college, I couldn't remember what happened at the end, so it was not as boring as it could have been.

But the real problem is not my staying up late rereading substandard SF instead of studying. It is that the books I got from the Book Thing smell. They have that peculiar bitter odor that I associate with yellowed acidic paper and garage storage. I had some books on Greece and Rome from a library book sale that I finally abandoned, never read, because they stank.

So, fellow bibliophiles: how does one purge used books of their stench? Baking soda? Dryer sheets? Some sort of cover-up perfume?