I love the gold edged paper, nice thick paper too, making it easy to turn pages. The books were usually large enough that if you laid it open the pages would stay put and you could read w/o having to hold the page down. It is a sort of dusty, slightly moldy smell, generally not a problem unless you have allergies to whatever dust and mold may be hanging around.
I lost whole collections of old books when we had severe flooding. I still get really upset when I think of it.