Learn English – word to describe the smell of death

How about fragrant or scented? Or you could try sweet-smelling, floral or something else referring to the specific scent.

In most dictionaries, musty is not a word with particularly pleasant connotations, while the smell of books is one that has pleasant associations for me.

You can say that books are redolent of paper and ink, or you can simply refer to that "old book smell."

This article has some insight on why old books smell the way they do:

An odour of a book is a complex mixture of odorous volatiles, emitted from different materials from which books are made.

The pleasant aromatic smell is due to aromatic compounds emitted mainly from papers made from ground wood which are characterised by their yellowish-brown colour. They emit vanilla-like, sweetly fragrant vanillin, aromatic anisol and benzaldehyde, with fruity almond-like odor. On the other hand, terpene compounds, deriving from rosin, which is used to make paper more impermeable to inks, contribute to the camphorous, oily and woody smell of books. A mushroom odour is caused by some other, intensely fragrant aliphatic alcohols.

A typical odour of "old book" is thus determined by a mixture of fragrant volatiles and is not dominated by any single compound. Not all books smell the same.

It's amusing to note that some enterprising folks are selling e-books with a scratch-and-sniff "book smell" sticker, and that others sell that "classic musty smell" or "new book smell" in a can. From Reuters:

A survey of 600 college students conducted by pollster Zogby International found that 43 percent of students identified smell, either a new or old smell, as the quality they most liked about books as physical objects.