What *didn't* I do with this book! I interviewed Harold McGee for an ELLE Canada feature about why honing your sense of smell can enhance your life (especially in these pandemic times). And as it's a personal favourite of mine for the year and well-suited for both science-minded nerds and home cooks as well as perfume enthusiasts, I was also delighted to feature this title in the big annual Holiday Gift Books Guide (in print in the weekend edition Books section on November 28, 2020) in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. (full feature at link)

Date reviewed: August 11, 2020

When life for the entire universe and planet turns on its end and like everyone else you "have nothing to do" while your place of work is closed and you are continuing to be in #COVID19 #socialisolation,  superspeed readers like me can read 250+ pages/hour, so yes, I have read the book … and many more today. And it is way too hot to go outside, so why not sit in from of the blasting a/c and read and review books??  BTW - stay home and save lives!!!!!!!! No tan is worth dying for.

I requested and received a temporary digital Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley, the publisher and the author in exchange for an honest review.  

From the publisher, as I do not repeat the contents or story of books in reviews, I let them do it as they do it better than I do 😸.

The ultimate guide to the smells of the universe--the ambrosial to the pungent, and everything in between--from the author of the acclaimed culinary guides On Food and Cooking and Keys to Good Cooking.

From Harold McGee, James Beard award-winning author and the leading expert on the science of food and cooking comes the extensive and wide-ranging exploration of the awe-inspiring world of smell. In Untitled on Smell, McGee takes us on a sensory-filled adventure, from the sulphurous aroma of the nascent earth over four billion years ago, to the sweetly fragrant Tian Shan mountain range north of the Himalayas, to the keyboard of your laptop, where trace notes of formaldehyde escape between the keys. We'll sniff the ordinary (wet pavement, bonfires, and cut grass) and extraordinary (fresh bread, wine, and chocolate), the delightful (roses, incense, and vanilla) and the unpleasant (skunks, spoiled meat, and rotten eggs). We'll smell each other. We'll smell ourselves.

Through it all, McGee familiarizes us with the actual bits of matter that we breathe in--the molecules that trigger our perceptions, that prompt the citrusy smell of celery root and beer and the medicinal smell of daffodils and sea urchins. And like everything in the physical world, molecules have history. Many of the molecules that we smell every day existed long before any creature was around to smell them--before there was even on a planet for those creatures to live on. Beginning with the origins of those molecules, which is the very origin of the universe and earth itself, McGee moves outward through time and space, through the smells of the air and the oceans, the forest and the meadows and the city, all the way to the smells of incense, perfume, wine, and food.

Here is the story of the world, of all of the smells under our collective nose. A work of astounding scholarship and originality, Untitled on Smell distills the science behind the smells and translates it, as only McGee can, into an accessible and entertaining guide. Incorporating the latest insights of sensory biology and flavour chemistry, and interwoven with personal insights, McGee reveals how our sense of smell has the power to expose invisible, intangible details of our material world and life, and trigger in our feelings that are the very essence of being alive.

This is decidedly a "Janet book" - tonnes of fascinating information that will undoubtedly be added into conversations for months on end.  "Scent" is such a fascinating part of our memory - "home" smells like different things to different people. Mine smells like baking-themed scented candles & Scentsy wax-melts, my parent's home smells like lemon-scented Pledge and laundry detergent (you entered through the laundry room), and industrial-strength heavy-duty cleaning products remind me of a summer job at a hotel. 

This is not a casual read but it is an EXCELLENT read --- in fact, it will be a book club pick in the club(s) I help chose books for. Scent evokes memory and stories and that is what a great read is about: thinking and sharing thoughts over a great book like this. It is not thought or dry, it is just pages of information that will invoke memories in every reader and in my opinion, you SHOULD read this book as it is just WONDERFUL.

As always, I try to find a reason to not rate with stars as I love emojis (outside of their incessant use by "🙏-ed Social Influencer Millennials/#BachelorNation survivors/Tik-Tok and YouTube  Millionaires/etc. " on Instagram and Twitter... Get a real job, people!) so let's give it 👃👃👃👃👃