A nice thing about second hand books

[hhc]

I LOVE second hand books, too!!!!! I've been reading lots of books my mom used to read when she was a kid, and I've actually learnt more things about my mom's childhood from the things I found in her books than from what she's told me.
PLUS I found out that my French teacher used to have a love life back in 1988, when she lent me The Plague, by Camus.

[bibliophile190]

I seem to find a lot of funeral invitations or wedding invitations. It's fascinating to read them.

[bounty]

I often find things in them, one time it was a dried flower along with a very old metro ticket. Many different and interesting things I've found actually...

Does it happens to anyone else?

occasionally yes i find a piece of old "litter" belonging to an earlier owner...and there is something neat about that. although, nothing sticks out to me as having been remarkable.

however, just within the past few years someone had bought an old book at an auction, was looking through it and discovered a ticket to an old jim thorpe basketball tour---pretty impressive from a lost sport history perspective:

http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetect..._jimthorpe.pdf

[JBI]

I stuck a train ticket in a book I was carrying in the Air Port in Rome. Somehow, someone managed to jack the book from me, I suspect thinking the book mark a boarding pass. Lost a 3 Euro English copy of David Copperfield . Could be worse though, the family sitting beside me on the plain had a wallet stolen, and 40,000 spent on its credit card in the 20 minutes it took them to call in the card.

[mangueken]

Good post idea Etinenne,
I love hunting for good used books. I never found anything truly memorable but an old receipt and occasional train or subway ticket tend to be pretty common. I usually enjoy the inscriptions and notes as well.

[Cellar Door]

I love used books... buying them new from borders or b&n just doesn't feel the same, although I will buy from them from time to time... nothing beats the feel of well-turned pages, the smell of them, the look of them. I once found a copy of Sonnets from the Portuguese (E. Barrett Browning) with a black velvet cover in a used bookstore. You can always find cool stuff in those, if you have the time to look there... Give me a small, run-down used bookstore any day, and keep your chain, shiny, clean, cookie-cutter chain stores

[Virgil]

How about germs? Perhaps I'm the only one but when I buy a second hand book I wonder if the previous owner was some disgusting sick person passing on germs.

[Cellar Door]

So you are the type who reads them with plastic gloves on then, eh Virgil?

[mayneverhave]

The copy of Harold Bloom's "Shakespeare: The Invention of the human" that I picked up from the library had a printed out internet critique of the work stuck about halfway through.

[Janine]

How about germs? Perhaps I'm the only one but when I buy a second hand book I wonder if the previous owner was some disgusting sick person passing on germs.

Virgil, I have bought a lot of used books and I am a germaphobic; I usually try not to think of that aspect of the book, but sometimes I do whipe off the covers lightly with antibacterial whipes or windex.

I love to look for used books. Some of my all time favorite books are from yardsales, thriftstores, used bookstores, fleamarkets, and book festivals. Also I have found the greatest one free from my library when they culled their book collections which they do from time to time. I marvel at some of those old copies. I only bought one book from Amazon new that turned out to be a bit moldy smelling. I really want to keep the book but I tried airing it some. I don't know if that mold smell will ever go away but I will probably put up with it. It is not that bad.

I don't recall finding anything of interest in a old book's pages, but now I will have to keep my eye out for books, that might have some left over memorabilia in them...that must be fun to discover. Probably when we went through books and magazines in my grandmother's attic there was interesting things between the pages such as postcards, notes, receits, old train tickets and many of the same things you have all mentioned.

Come to think of it, a friend of mine trash-picks, he found a book with two old baseball tickets in it and they were worth some bucks. Others he found family photos and stuff like that. I am sure he found many more things of great interest in his travels; I had just forgotten.

[Virgil]

So you are the type who reads them with plastic gloves on then, eh Virgil?

No I don't read with gloves, but you never know who's been handling the book before you.

Virgil, I have bought a lot of used books and I am a germaphobic; I usually try not to think of that aspect of the book, but sometimes I do whipe off the covers lightly with antibacterial whipes or windex.

It doesn't stop me from buying used books, but I must admit I don't shop for used books as much as I used to. I'm not phobic about it, but I do wonder.

[princesspoppi]

I like used books, but will not buy one if it has like a stained cover or something, you never know what it could be! If I think about it too much I probably wouldn't buy any used books, so I am trying to get past it.

[Lioness_Heart]

I've never found anything in a second-hand book, but I frequently find things in my own! They're generally things that I picked up as bookmarks, then forgot where I left them when, two weeks later, I really needed them.

Once in a school library book I found a note written on the inside cover, that sounded really strange. It seemed as though it was from a teacher to a pupil and seemed, while not quite a love note, surpassing the usual teacher-student relationship. I've always wondered what exactly that was about...

[kelby_lake]

What did it say?

[Niamh]

I'm curious now too!