Impromptu bookmarks found in used books
On this sweet and poignant LibraryThing message board, bookish types discuss the things they've found serving as book-marks in the books they've collected. I've always loved used-book impromptu bookmarks -- I even gave them a passage in my story Craphound: " The
control-room in the middle of the carousel had a stack of paperback sci-fi
novels, Ace Doubles that had two books bound back-to-back, and when you finished
the first, you turned it over and read the other. Fyodor let me keep them, and
there was a pawn-ticket in one from Macon, Georgia, for a transistor radio."
I have about 6 or 7 journals written in the 30's and 40's by a german woman who is in the midst of an unpleasant marriage with an alcoholic and in those I found several items-a doberman's head cut out of a color magazine, drycleaning papers with pins stuck in them, newspaper articles about Russia preparing for war with Japan "this spring", a postcard for ordering a subscription of Coronet"? A price tag with pin from Wanamaker's a poem entitled Adolf Hitler lied! in german, I'll be back to finish tom'w, too tired tonight<Link (via MeFi)
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I remember once I lent some Laurell K. Hamilton books to my mother and she was like, "Oh here, I found these inside one of them" and handed me some papers including an old business card of mine.
I said thanks, but I remember thinking, "No no no no!!!" I ended up wedging the papers back inside when I got the books back, but... it wasn't the same.
A one dollar bill, series 1963. Found uncirculated, marking page 63 in a 1963 Lafayette Radio Electronics catalog. It's still in there, on the shelf behind me.
Found in the locked basement of the Humboldt State University library in a history book about Alexander von Humboldt... the neatly torn logo from the wrapper of a roll of Humboldt Roll Toilet Tissue.
The inserter also typed a message at the bottom: SUCH IS FAME ---- 1953.
I scanned it to use as my desktop wallpaper, then reinserted the wrapper.
In a 1910 anthology of true-crime stories, a 1910 Chicago streetcar transfer, and a receipt for a monthly payment on a suite of furniture from a Department store, both dated the same day.
When I was ten or so, I borrowed my sister's copy of "Willy Wonka and the Great Glass Elevator." She hadn't finished reading it but was going away for the week and let me read it in the meantime.
The bookmark she'd been using was . . . a sanitary napkin. The old kind with ribbons on the ends. Not *used* or anything, but the cootie factor for a ten year old was off the flipping charts.
I rushed it back to her room and read something else.
I think I waited until she had finished the book before I borrowed it again.
I picked up a copy of Cosmos by Carl Sagan at the local library a while ago, and found a photocopied manual for the NES Back To The Future game. I put it back in when I returned the book, of course.
At my local library they have a bulletin board up with pictures that people have left in books. I think it's my favorite bulletin board ever. Old pictures, new pictures, polaroids -- interestingly, nearly ALL of them were pictures of people or their animals.
I collect old French textbooks, and if I'm really lucky there's some kid's homework stuck between the pages. I have one from 1943 with a pocket in the back (think Moleskine) that was stuffed full of some girl's handiwork. She conjugated like a pro, but was tripped up by passé composé like the rest of us.
I recently found an draft of an academic memo from the 1970s used as a bookmark. The sad thing was that I googled the name and found the obituary of the professor who wrote it (she died a year or so ago). I guess her kids or whomever just sold her whole library to the used bookstore where I bought the book -- some other books I bought at the same time have her name stamped on them.
In a book from the Phoenix public library, back in the early 1970's, I found an unfinished pencil drawing of a barbarian warrior.
I have no idea who the artist was, but damn was he/she good! I'm talking Roy Krenkel/Frank Frazetta good.
My own incidental bookmarks tend to be those blown-in subscription cards that fall out of magazines.
I volunteer for the Friends of the Pima County Public Library in Tucson, Arizona and work in their warehouse where donations of thousands of books are processed for their yearly sales (the warehouse contains hundreds of thousands of books). The stuff that we take out of donated books fills boxes and includes every manner of paper ephemera one could imagine. My best find was $200 in 5, 10 and 20 dollar bills stuck in a biography of Harry Truman! Somebody's mad money, no doubt. We had a party for the volunteers with that cash, since we had no way of tracking down the donor. It's always interesting to look at the photos and postcards and greeting cards, wonderful bookmarks, sales slips and receipts, all kinds of certificates and ticket stubs. Fascinating!
Dollys (#11): Once again, the buck(s) stop(s) with Truman.
I cataloged for a used book retailer for a few months.
I found a few interesting things -- the one that stands out most, is the copy of "When someone you love has AIDS" that contained a Polaroid of a young adult woman wearing only a pair of panties. I still wonder what the story behind that one was.
I just wanted to add that LibraryThing is excellent. Not sure if I'd describe it generally as "sweet and poignant", but there you go. There are a great many intelligent and fun book-lovers there. Check it out.
Oh, and the English-language site is http://www.librarything.com -- the linked thread is on one of the many alternate-language versions available. Just so you know.
I once found a receipt complete with the full credit card number on it. What an innocent year 1997 must have been.
Found a strip of bacon in a library book once. What could I do but leave it there?
I like to put a single sheet of toilet paper somewhere in the book before returning it to the library, just so I can imagine the look on the next bloke's face when he stops to think about it.
what?none of you leave polaroids of staged murders?
Why stage, when there are so many crime-scene photos available? (not to mention the poor folks I keep in my basement... no, really, never mention them)
before we were officially together i lent my boyfriend a book that i had hidden a picture of me in my bikini, sitting on some stairs playing a guitar with my legs a bit too spread open. i had put it there years earlier and completely forgot about it. i was pretty embarassed when he showed it to me. he didn't mind finding it though...
The quote re:the german woman with the bad marriage was mine, and now I wish I was not drooling over my keyboard at 3 am and had been profound and learned. Not really, I was thrilled when I clicked on the link expecting to see someone's jaunty remark, only to find my badly puncuated and capitalized comment. Also, I have in my possesion the same sci-fi books mentioned in "Craphound" that you turn over for the story on the other side. I thought they were pretty unique and oddly enough purchased them in a whole box of sci-fi paperbacks by all the authors you would expect, Asimov, Clarke, C.S.Lewis, and the double novels are complete unabridged Ace books also. I came across them shortly after I had decided that my reading experience was sadly lacking in the sci-fi genre. When you read some of the greats you cannot help but recognize the talent and dogged determination it takes to create worlds from inside their head, and to give it to their readers without selfishness.