I've read books where there is quite a bit about people's individual scent with it being implied/stated that you can identify people in passing by how they smell.
Now I have noticed how different houses smell, all the obvious ones of food, and flowers, the smell of concrete and earth just after rain (especially in the summer), strong perfume or aftershave, or having eaten garlic recently. But to me not every person does smell of anything.
So does everyone (else) here, notice how each and EVERY individual smells, or are there some people who are under the nose-dar?
Oh, and I can see one small problem with smells in books - places you want to include but can't afford to visit other than via the internet. I was thinking just now of the smell of a church - cool, underlying slight damp, old books, old plaster, old stone, perhaps wax polish, sometimes flowers. It then occurred to me that that is the smell of a Victorian or earlier English church. If I were to put that smell against say a modern built church in sunny California, I'd probably be dead wrong.
Edited further to add
You can pick up on smells of places you haven't been from travel books and autobiography.
Obviously in SFF you can invent smells.
I'm all for smells in books BUT what I am wombling around towards saying, is handle with care and know your limitations. As in if a key part of a character is what they smell and you send them somewhere you've never smelt that really exists, then you could upset readers who have really smelt that.
And on that convoluted note I think I feel lying in the sun and reading a book coming on. (Smell of slightly musty sun lounger that hasn't been used lately, old paperback I am re-reading, sun cream.)
