Interesting Things Found in Books

I once checked out a book from my local library and found a $20 inserted into the first few pages. I doubt it was a bookmark because it wasn’t too far into the book, but why else was it there?

A couple of years ago I found in a book that I bought in a swap meet a postcard from Hawaii that was filled out but never sent. It was from 1963 and the guy was writting to his wife in Los Angeles. I put a stamp on the old post card and sent it on its way. The romantic in me likes to think the couple still lived there and they are still talking about that postcard.

I’ve only found scribbled notes giving away the ending… sob…

I found a business card inside a book good free admission to a dance hall dated December 23, 1943.I’d like to think a soldier came home on leave for the holidays and never used it.

Just today I bought four old cookbooks from a thrift shop. In total there were three findy-things: a canned salmon label with recipes (including a salmon gelatine mold), an advert for a campaigning alderman from 1960, and my favourite – a handwritten recipe for ‘May’s best raisin cookies’.

I bought an small leather bound book of poetry once at a used book sale. It was inscribed as a graduation present in 1921. Inside were dried four leaf clovers, 6 or 7 total. It paints such a romantic scene.

Should have mailed it to Santa!

I bought a copy of George Takei’s autobiography late last year at a second hand book shop. Opened it up when I got home to find that he’s actually signed it as well:

‘To Winifred, all best wishes, George Takei’

dated 12/14/94

I think that it’s a bit of a keeper.

Once I found a couple of Polaroids; extreme closeup shots of a couple’s junk. Wish I had found money instead, yuck.

A few years ago I found 120 quid in a book I owned and hadn’t read for a decade or so. I’ve no idea why or when I stashed it there.

I volunteer for our local Friends of the Library that receives donations of thousands of used and new books. We are careful to check the books for whatever might be tucked inside (I found $250 in a biography of Harry Truman a few years ago), and we have collections of “things found in books” that get made into a display for our monthly book sales. Once I was working a book sale, and the person who was sitting with me discovered an old photo of her wedding up on the display — that was a source of much merriment among the volunteers. The list of items could fill up many pages on single-spaced, 8pt type I’m sure (the Friends is a very old organization). We too have found bacon. Why would someone use a strip of bacon for a bookmark? The mind boggles!

I found a fully autographed program from the 60′s from a reunion of the first Saskatchewan Roughriders team, or their first team to win the Grey Cup. (Don’t remember exactly) Anyway, it was fully signed, had the menu from the meal and everything.

I found it in a biography of racing driver and team owner Bruce McLaren.

I bought a book of poetry by John Donne, printed in the 1940s. It was heavily annotated and underlined, and had been studied very hard. I assumed it must have belonged to a professor or grad student, until I found two high school hall passes inside the pages.

I went online to look up this school (in upstate NY) that had such well-educated students. Today their resources for English classes include a “Lord of the Flies” video game. It made me want to cry.

@ Robolasse

What CAN the police do? I fear the worst for all of us as I feel that something nasty has been unleashed . . .

. . . on a separate note, my friend told me this morning that the library’s temporarily closed due to “unforseen circumstances” – the mystery deepens . . .

“She took the money to a local bank to verify its authenticity and that was how we heard about it. She didn’t give a cent back to the thrift shop, either. A deeply frustrating experience for many, I can assure you.”

Payback, imo. I lived for years near a Goodwill, and its amazing how much stuff will never see the shelves that they just turn around and sell privately to whoever is going to pay the most. It never failed to put a smile on my face when something managed to slip past their greed filter.
Its even better when they suspect your item its worth something when you bring it to the front, but some “new guy” mis-marked it and they have to sell it to you for $1.
I love that look on their faces, that bitter angry look. Hearing about the “frustration” over things you get FOR FREE to start with, gives me warm fuzzies. Good for her for not sharing, imo. Fair game.

I found a German book in a charity shop in Dunoon, something about it made me flick through the pages and I found a photo in there.

It’s of a Zeppelin flying over somewhere in Germany and is dated 1937 on the back. I keep on meaning to scan it in to find out what the rest of the writing on the back says.

My son-in-law picked up a book in a garage sale that he thought might interest me. Inside the front cover, I found a note I had written to my parents some 20 years earlier, when I had given them the book. (New.) How it got to a garage sale in a different city, I’ll never know.