A photo strip of an intense (of course) adolescent brunette in, if memory serves, Flowers of Evil by Baudelaire. I wondered what had become of her.

Two clippings in Catching the Light by Arthur Zajonc from an Episcopal cathedral library: a WSJ or NYT review of Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, and a clipping a Houses of Worship column by Philip Terzian entitled "Spong Gone."

The family Bibles are replete with obituaries, memorial service cards, spiritual /bon mots/ and the like.

Here's a site for people to add photos that they've found. I'm always finding photos in books, and until I found this site, I just threw them out. Never felt like the right thing to do, but what can you do.

Photos Found on the Street

Recently I found a book in a second-hand bookshop, complete with a letter submitting the book for this years Booker prize. I guess now we know what happens to those submission copies...

I used to work in a library (so perhaps I have an unfair advantage?), but postcards and photos popped up a lot. My favourite find was an uncashed cheque.

I've found an eyeglass prescription in a used book called Stalking the Wild Asparagus. I was interested enough to see my opthalmologist about how that absent reader's eyesight. He said --- from the notes-- that the person was suffering from "macular degeneration"-- something. WHich I think means the person was going blind. And which would be a sad fate for an avid reader.

While cataloging my books, I found a movie ticket from Will Rogers Theatre in Oklahoma City, the night I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981. Only $1.50, and that wasn't for the matinee! Also found some photos of Mexico that my dad took when he lived there.

I found an yellowed obit of Harold Nicolson in the second volume of his diaries at Trip Taylor's yesterday.

One advantage of cataloging with the book in hand are the things in the books. I've found recipes in my grandmother's handwriting on the insides of cookbook covers, dried flowers and leaves, an occasional newspaper clipping. But the best may have been the sheet of paper with a drawing my son did over a decade ago.

These items have mostly remained in the books to be discovered again someday.

My copy of Le Petit Larousse (a kind of French encyclopedia and who's-who) has all kinds of elaborate cut-paper snowflakes sandwiched between the pages.

A few months ago I opened A Light in the Attic and found a gift certificate I bought for my partner five years ago, put in "a safe place," and then promptly lost. Luckily, he could still spend it!

In the course of our business, my wife and I find all sorts of stuff, especially in antiquarian books, even more especially in antiquarian religious books. Leaves and flowers are common, also some thiongs that look like postage stamps, but have no price and depict religious scenes. Never quite know what they were for.

We usually pass these things on with the book to it`s next owner.

We did keep a Boots bookmark (Boots the Chemist, now Alliance Boots, started life as a single shop in a poor area of Nottingham, run by a former agricultural labourer and his wife. One of their less well-known ventures was the Boots Booklovers Library, which ran from 1898 to some time in the `50s. Now the company`s a multi-national of course, they`re closing warehouses, shedding staff and have edited the story of the `Booklovers Library` on their web site down to a couple of lines. C`est la vie.)

Another area I find fascinating is old religious books which have been the property of a priest, and have hand-written notes relating to different services, parishioners etc - usualy on the inside front cover.We had one with a truncated family tree of a particlar family and notes relating to (we thought) a forthcoming wedding or funeral of a family member.

We also had a World War One soldier`s bible at one point with a pencilled name, rank and address of a field hospital in what looked like France. That went to a collector in the US as I recall.

thiongs that look like postage stamps, but have no price and depict religious scenes. Never quite know what they were for

Nick, those are some sort of "devotional images", quite common especially among Roman Catholics. I remember when, as a child, I kind of collected some beautifully drawn ones, vividly colored and gilded. We used to get them when we went to religious instruction (mandatory in my Italian childhood days), and also in visiting churches.

Just found the business card for a "men's clothing"
department salesman with John Wanamaker in Philadelphia. It is noted on the first blank page that the book (Mahan on Naval Warfare), was read in July 1942.

Not very interesting in itself, but what puzzles me is the upper right portion of the card. It says: Rittenhouse 9500, and under that: Race 1000. Phone? Phone exchanges used to be words, but only 4 digits in a big city? And what's that underneath? Extension?

myshelves,

I'm originally from the Philly area. Rittenhouse (Square) and Race are streets in the city, but John Wanamaker was between Market and Chestnut, not near Race Street or Rittenhouse Square at all. I bet those were in fact exchanges. The first two letters in the exchange name acted as digits, so Rittenhouse 9500 would really be the number 74-9500. Seems to me the seventh digit came along later in the forties, from what my old dad used to say in his stories.

Wow what a blast from the past! Thanks for the memories...

myshelves,

Check out the Telephone Exchange Name Project.

They confirm that Rittenhouse was the exchange name in the 1940's for Center City Philadelphia (where JW was located). The digit 6 was added to RI in 1946. In the 1950's (when my memory begins) the exchange name was changed to LOcust.

But the Telephone Exchange Name Project explanation for the Race exchange doesn't make a lot of sense to me... maybe it will to you.

Thanks, ciciha!

Maybe the Race # was the salesman's home phone?? Or another # for the store?

My attempts to search on the site keep timing out. Maybe thousands of LTers are busy looking up old phone exchanges thanks to your post. :-)

I love finding stuff like the card. Hmm. Man reading Mahan on Naval Warfare in July 1942 . . . I wonder if Wanamaker did alterations on Navy officers' uniforms or something.

myshelves,

Maybe your reader went to JW's book department after he'd bought his suit, and bought the book there... I see it came out in '41. Wanamaker's used to have a heck of a book department. Those were the days, when department stores really were full-service! My mom used to buy fabric there every summer to sew our yearly back-to-school dresses...

Wonder what the "men's clothing" item looked like! Double-breasted, with a high waistband no doubt!

I'd forgotten that department stores used to have good book departments!

Btw, I also found a book with an interesting bookplate. It had lines for the owner's name, the book number (talk about cataloging!), and the location & date of purchase. (This book was #342, purchased on Oct. 6, 1909.)

I've often found stamps/stickers from used bookstores on the inside covers or frontispieces of books I get at my local used book emporium. Buying from places like Thriftbooks.com also gives you the sales stickers sometimes. It's kind of a "Where's George" (the dollar bill project) geography lesson with books.

I buy most of my old hardbacks at the Salvation Army (20% off on Wednesdays) and I picked up a copy of the Nancy Drew mystery The Mystery of the Brass Bound Trunk from 1952 and inside was a letter and envelope with a postmark from Horse Cave, Kentucky dated Jan 11, 1956 at 12:30pm. Even the stamp is in excellent condition (a purple 3 cent Statue of Liberty).

I also collect old dictionaries. I've got one from the 1880s with words pencilled inside the cover.

"Mary C. Higginson - September 29th, 1893 - written when in Prides Crossing, Massachusetts (time) Friday P.M. at 20 minutes of two just before luncheon time (where) in the parlor at the desk."

Earlier dates hand written by the same person are July 7, 1895 and November 16, 1885 and someone else's name that I can't read writing in 1900.

I once found a poem handwritten beautifully in a copy of Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon.

Meddelandet ändrat av dess författare, dec 29, 2006, 1:36pm.

I can't remember the book off hand, but it had a letter written in 1910 from an Aunt to her niece. She was wishing her well for upcoming wedding and couldn't wait to meet the wonderful young man. I actually bought the book just so that I could keep that memento as well :) I wonder which book box it's in in the spare bedroom?

And here's the creative flip side, fellow who has collected thousands of items, letters, notes, old cards, shopping lists, diary notes, etc and made them into books.

His name is Davy Rothbart and he has written "FOUND" and "FOUND II" He also has a website www.foundmagazine.com.

Have a look.

I bought some second hand jazz books recently and found some letters tucked away in the back of one - it seemed to be part of a correspondence between an aspiring jazz writer and the proprietor of a specialist jazz magazine?/publisher?/bookstore?/not sure concerning a proposed book.

There were some (very) sparse notes which I thought the would-be-author had made for himself. Truthfully I don`t see much likelihood that the book ever saw light of day as the notes were sketchy in the extreme.

I just found two punch cards in a book of Standard Mathematical Tables. It looks like its IBM 80 column standard card used before 1964, among the other things printed on the card are the words "REQUISITION AND ADVICE CARD". Rather interesting to my young (21 year old) mind.

Ah, the good old Hollerith punch cards. Just FYI, Quester, some parts of the military were still using them as late as 1978. The IBM 360/20 at the Naval Comm Station in Japan changed its program date and other settings every morning at 0000Zulu (aka GMT or UTC) when I was there in 1974.

I once found a junior high student ID card in a book. Not strange in and of itself, but for some reason, this student felt compelled to have his photo taken in a medieval warrior costume with full chain mail vest and helmet, sword, and shield. It was clear the photo wasn't a joke and that the student was very earnest. The ID left us scraching our heads.

I once found two pictures of a naked pregnant woman. In one picture she is standing next to a horse laughing and in the other she is sitting crossed legged on the ground.... she had very long curly hair that covered her breasts. (I found this book at the Goodwill)

I also found $25 dollars in a really old Willa Cather book once...

this is such a neat group! I thought I was the only one who had a collection of oddities found in books...

my favorites are:
-a clipping from the 1936 Boston Post: "King Gives Up Throne for Exile With Wally--Duke of York Succeeds" that is now above my desk; it has a lovely photo of the former King George VI and the Queen Mother, with a caption reading "New Monarch Serious Man"

-a letter from what appeared to be an old school friend, telling the recipient how awful the book was (Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes), but suggesting that he read it anyway

-recently I also found one of my own high school report cards in a copy of Mythology by Edith Hamilton. That took me back...

Dear bookie,

What neat finds. I would treasure a clipping like yours from The Post to add to my Anglophilia collection.

p.s. I deleted the following message (#29) because it was a duplicate. Don't know how that happened.

Meddelandet ändrat av dess författare, maj 19, 2007, 10:21am.

Probably my top find so far - a publisher`s flyer with an advertisement for a series of Sherlock Holmes reprints, complete with illustration of the great sleuth. Tthe illus is probably more Eric Parker than Sidne Paget, but none the worse for that.

On the back is a similar advertisement for the works of P C Wren.

The flyer is from publishers John Murray, and was in the back of a 1927 edition of The Sowers by H S Merriman, which appears unread.

We`re planning to frame the flyer and put it on the wall as we`re both afficionados of Jeremy Brett as Holmes in the UK TV series.

Reciept for the book "Rise and Fall" by Milovan Djilas. It had the persons full credit card number and name printed on it. People just were not as cautious as they are these days with thier personal information.

Some of my books date back to the 1940s when I had money to buy them. . . thru the years I've inserted newspaper reviews. More fun than reading the reviews now is reading what's on the other side of the newspaper or magazine clipping.

Meddelandet ändrat av dess författare, apr 14, 2008, 1:23am.

Today at work in the children's room, as I handed a patron a book about bears, a picture fell out. The picture was of a cute little girl wearing a tiara. The patron began to giggle, and I thought it was because of the picture. She replied, "It's not just the picture, I bought my house from that little girl's parents." The girl in the picture had moved out of town a year... shows how often that book circulates.

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

And then there is the (true) 2001 story of a message in a Yale electrocardiography book. If the student had read the book's copyright notice, he would see he had won a 1965 Thunderbird convertible. Of the 60.000 copies sold, only 5 found the message. The winner was then chosen at random.

Some time ago, I opened a 1930s hardback book and out dropped a publisher`s flyer advertising a Sherlock Holmes anthology.

Ultimately, we`re thinking of putting it in a clip frame on a wall in our house.

In the meantime, it`s on my profile page if anyone wants to see it.

Oooh! You should definitely frame it, Nick!

I think you`re right. We have a few oddments like that, including a vintage black and white postcard depicting the bloodhound that `played` Sexton Blake`s dog Pedro in a 1950`s TV series.

They`re all going on the wall one day.

I recently found a photo of a grinning man with a bouncing baby in my used hardback copy of Margaret Atwood's The Tent. Somewhat of a contrast with the material.

Looks like no one mentioned yet that this group got boingboinged. I admit, tho' I'm a LibraryThing user, that's how I found this discussion!

Not in a library book, but once I bought a used psychology book from the 70's at the thrift store. It had copies of the student's quiz grades in it (he was a C student) and at the top of the sheet was his social security number.

Just this weekend in a book I found some teenage angst poetry about being invisible.

other stuff--newspaper clippings, photos, birthday cards, letters.

I keep an album of found stuff.

Once I bought a used psychology book from the 70's at the thrift store. It had copies of the student's quiz grades in it (he was a C student) and at the top of the sheet was his social security number.

Just this weekend in a book I found some teenage angst poetry about being invisible.

other stuff--newspaper clippings, photos, birthday cards, letters.

I keep an album of found stuff.

I haven't been on in a while and was thrilled to find that my message had been Boingboinged, whatever that is. It felt great to be acknowledged. The funny thing is that, when I read the message on the Boingboing site I too have many of those sci-fi books that can be flipped over to read the story on the other side. Having never read one of those I thought I had found something quite special, guess not so much. What I love about the journals that I have is that the writer is a very strong woman who is unhappily married and yet getting on with her life and spending time with friends and family. That era was not conducive to quick and easy divorces so she spent her time at the theater, flower shows, etc. She also spent some time making socks and warm clothing for the armed forces, and there is a part of the journals that is rather difficult to make out but I think she may have hired a private eye to confirm her suspicions. Some of what she says is difficult to read, not because of her handwriting alone, but also because she is uncomfortabl with the content. She was only in her thirties and I think she was not sure how much loyalty she shoud show this guy. I think she would not have put it in her journal anyway.

Meddelandet ändrat av dess författare, jul 18, 2008, 11:20pm.

wow, so many cool things!

I run a website that I think you might like, it's dedicated to sharing photos of things found in books - http://www.thingsinbooks.com

I'm new to librarything (I'll be adding my bookshelf soon though - what a great idea!) so I apologise if this message is against the terms of the site.

My favourite find so far is a letter from the author, dated 1937 explaining about how the book (The early dominicans) is a gift, and that the recipient has to read its "tedious pages". He talks about the coronation and all sorts, it's fascinating (link: http://www.thingsinbooks.com/found/thing...)

thanks for reading, and apologies about the shameless self-promotion.