Books smell good. You know what I’m talking about, right? Apparently it’s down to this:
Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us.
– Perfumes: The Guide
The good news for us is that there are some bookish crafters who have combined their love of literature with their desire to be clean. The results smell pretty good.
This is The Fizzbanger, or the The Big Friendly Ballistic, by LUSH. I hear it makes quite a scene. When the performance is over, they recommend that you grab yourself a copy of Roald Dahl’s ‘The BFG‘ to read whilst you soak in the lovely fragrance.
Special mention also goes to their Dorothy bath bomb, which comes with the tagline “If you’re not already a friend of Dorothy, isn’t it time you tried it?”
If you’re into soap modelled after beloved children’s books, these soaps by lavenderrosegifts won’t disappoint. And don’t worry — these eggs are organic!
This bar of soap by SteamBathFactory contains a real skeleton key to “to unlock your inner Temptress!” The best part about it is that it’s created to smell like “wood, coffee, old books & patchouli”… all the best things!
This offering by HaldeCraft is inspired by Richard Adams’ book ‘Watership Down‘. Its a set of nine guest sized soaps named after the rabbits in the story like Clover and Blackberry. It also has some fancy-sounding fragrances like Summer Silflay, Kehaar’s Sea Breeze and… err… Lettuce.
The Necronomicon is a fictional grimoire which appears in the stories of horror writer HP Lovecraft. Now it can appear in your bathroom, thanks to Etsy user DapperSoaps! This is a “quite masculine scent that brings to mind the desert and old books bound in leather in hearth-warmed libraries”. Mmmm.
No literary soap list would be complete without a mention of ‘Fight Club’. This Fight Club soap is caffeinated for some reason. But we don’t talk about it.
I feel like this rich cedarwood and musk scented comic book soap by GEEKSOAP might pack more punch. She also makes an amazing Game of Thrones set — in fact her whole website is amazing and I severely lament the fact that I can’t think of a good reason to talk about the hearthstone soap on a book blog!
Dugshop has a whole range of sleazy pulp fiction soap bars, which they call “slut scents”, but this one is my favourite.
As an Avon lady, I heartily approve of these vintage Avon soaps modelled after Pinocchio and Cinderella. Although Pinocchio looks like he’s freaking out a little there.
Finally, this Tolkein-inspired soap is something to marvel. I’d imagine that Fangorn Forest is a woodsy scent you can lose yourself in.
Faevourite 
Leave a Reply