Korean publisher… no, wait, not generally… Korean scent-products manufacturer, put out a pair of volumes titled Peanuts: You Are a Loving Person and Your Life will be Filled with Scent, volumes 1 and 2. These were available through Nordstrom’s in the US, although I only latched on to that fact in time to get volume 1, with the Charlie Brown on the cover and woody scents, and missed out on the floral (dare I suggest feminine?) scent of the Snoopy-covered volume 2. Both are available through the Oh Scent! website (and if you click there, you’ll also get to see their other Peanuts items), but given the postage from Korea, I’ve decided to forego completing my collection per now. But… but… despite being a foreign book, it’s in English! How long will I be willing to hold out? And will it be one of those situations where, as in the Hall & Oates hit reworking of Mike Oldfield’s song “Family Man”, I will finally decide that I want being offered to late, to find that it is no longer available. (This is, to the best of my recollection, the first time and, to the best of my instinct, last time that I’ve ever compared a Peanuts book to a sex worker.)

Now, part of my willingness to skip Volume 2 may be that these are not convenient books. They come sealed in a clear plastic envelope; I am unsure of whether this is intended to protect the book from losing scent or if the goal is more to keep the scent from bleeding on all the surroundings… but in either case I had to rip open the envelope to read the book, and I have unleashed the scent upon the world.

I am not a lover of commercial scent products, and I find it a struggle to navigate anywhere near scent-oriented portions of stores as the air feels solid with the stench. As such, I am not going to be making on olfactory review of the product.

The book has a foreword in both Korean and English, hoping that “messages of life from Snoopy” will “console” you. You are then instructed that “turning each page, you will find a page which will be taken to heart with special fragrance. At the moment, please tear and attach the page to the place that you want.” No! I shall not rip apart this book!! I shall ignore its command.

Each page has a strip or, more commonly, an excerpt from a strip, sometimes in (odd) color, sometimes in black-and-white, with a quote from the strip (sometimes from the reproduced part, sometimes not) on the back. So it ends up in the range of the Happiness is a Warm Puppy books, an attempt at a somewhat uplifting look at life. But once you had in the scent aspect, and the expectation that you will destroy the book and decorate places with it, it becomes less a book and more an experience. And, not being a person who seeks out commercial scent, this is an experience meant for someone else; the quality of the experience for the appropriate audience, I cannot judge.

Perhaps, despite what the title claims, I am not a very loving person and my life will not be filled with scent.

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