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Amusing or Disturbing finds in 2nd Hand Books

  
  

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Saveloy
16:01 / 12.08.02
Anyone with a fetish for second hand books may understand
the thrill I had when an instruction leaflet for Scheriproct Suppositories fell out of the copy of "The World's Worst Movies" (a celebration of shite, appropriately enough) which I bought in a charity shop at lunchtime today. What amusing, disturbing or fascinating ephemera / notations have you found in tatty old books, dear reader?

A couple more, from memory:

"Peter Darington –Seaman Detective", by Douglas V Duff (1948): all the pages have been manually re-numbered; the original owner, possibly annoyed by the fact that the first story does not actually start on page 1, has crossed all the page numbers out and written their own in, in orange pencil. *shiver*

A book full of b&w photos of unusual aircraft from the 1950s: contains a perfectly preserved copy of The Official Secrets Act form - unsigned.
 
 
Rollo Kim, on location
17:24 / 12.08.02
I forgoet the book - but it had three photos of three naked women inside that were obviously 'contact' pics from some kind of 'Fun Loving Forty-something male, hairy back, seeks pre-teen playmates for films, fun, evenings infront of the fire, and really, really hard sex...' ad, with things like "I can't wait to hear what kinds of things you'd love to shove up my bum..' written on the backs.
 
 
tom-karika nukes it from orbit
17:48 / 12.08.02
Not in books but on a book stall:
A cross-section of the book stand at Gwennap Church Summer Fete (Don't ask):


Tom Clancy books * 10
The Tactics and Strategy of War
Conflicts of the Twentieth century (full colour photo edition)
Anne Widdecombe's Autobiography (proof copy)
House of Leaves
A Guide to your New Catheter
Hitler's rise to Power
War (vol. II)


And apparently most of the book stand was donated by one person...
 
 
Tryphena Absent
17:49 / 12.08.02
In the front of Derrida's 'Of Grammatology'... I think I've failed my degree because of this tosser.
 
 
gravitybitch
18:03 / 12.08.02
I'm still waiting...

I leave interesting things in books - shopping lists for ritual items, scheduling lists that include sex parties, the occasional sketch or haiku... but nobody's returned the favor yet. Maybe I'm buying the wrong used books?
 
 
XXII:X:II = XXX
19:49 / 12.08.02
I've rarely found much significant inserted into the books themselves. I practice my own form of magic I've dubbed thrift fu, in which I assume that any book or any other given object the universe wants me to have it will make sure I cannot resist buying it at a greatly discounted price. Today the universe presented me with a complete Rider-Waite Tarot deck for only $1. Fuck yeah.

Probably the best little joke the universe played was in a vintage red plaid jacket my mother bought me, which had in its breast pocket a 40+ year old condom, still in its original packaging. Though if the universe meant that as a message for me, I'm not sure if it was "Go out and get laid, kid" or "You too will have an unused condom in your pocket 40+ years from now."
 
 
Persephone
21:10 / 12.08.02
We once found a book in a used bookstore about things you could knit with dog and cat hair, with the note --in the book, not marginalia-- that "the fiber from hairballs is not usable for knitting up."
 
 
The Apple-Picker
22:52 / 12.08.02
I leave interesting things in books --I've started doing this. I leave things in library books when I return them.

A few days ago I bought a book on Booker T. Washington from Goodwill. Near the back were two newspaper articles on him, prompted by his death; the articles were dated 1915. I've only read one, as the other has dissolved along its folds. What was interesting about that one, though, was the admiration and respect the author obviously had for Booker T. Washington tainted by his racist language in describing Washington's accomplishments.
 
 
Margin Walker
23:17 / 12.08.02
Never found anything interesting in a book, but once found a bunch of sales receipts from the 40's in a suitjacket I bought from St. Vinnie's. I also got a free flannel shirt from a 2nd hand clothing store once. It had this tag that read "ask me about this shirt!" The hippy proprietor said that it was free because they found some ishen in it , so they were giving the shirt away 'to keep the karma flowing' or whatever. Hey, you can't beat that price with a stick.
 
 
Stone Mirror
00:41 / 13.08.02
On the general subject of finding things in books (or leaving things ditto), have folks out there stumbled across bookcrossing.com?

The idea is pretty straightforward: you register your book on the website (once you've read it, presumably), and get a unique identifier number for it. You put a label with the address of the web site and the ID number in the book and "release it into the wild", i.e. leave it someplace for someone else to find.

With any luck, the finder will get onto the web site and update an entry so as to reflect the book's "travels".

A pretty cool idea, which would not have been especially possible before the advent of the web...
 
 
Saint Keggers
02:46 / 13.08.02
The only odd thing I ever found in a book was in a textbook only the evolutionary process in bones (from dinosaurs to now!) it was a pamphlete on 'Self Hypnotism Made Easy!!',from 1942, but dealt mainly with meditation.
 
 
illmatic
07:15 / 13.08.02
Second hand bookstores are much more sexy than normal stores.
My prize find would have to be "The Beginning Was The End" by Oskar Kiss Maerth (nice middle name!) - an account of how all that's wrong in the world can be traced to the fact we used canibalism to artifically acclerate our evolution - eating each brains for sexual stimulus back in the mists of prehistory. Makes sense to me.
 
 
Margin Walker
20:24 / 13.08.02
Of course there's also the weird stuff at http://www.foundmagazine.com:



Amber, you're one messed-up chica....
 
 
Captain Zoom
21:34 / 13.08.02
I bought Conan Doyle's book about the Cottingly Fairies and found in the back the newspaper article wherein the young lady (very old then) fessed up to it being a hoax. And there's still people who go on about that one picture...

I love the things I find in old books. I actually have a huge pile of stuff that I'm one day going to publish in a book called "Other People's Bookmarks". I found a receipt for a purchase from Eatons from 1912 once. And tons of photos. A sealed pack of Fisherman's Friend, which I could do with right now, where is that thing.....

Found a signed cheque from 1974 for $12, but it wasn't made out to me, dammit. Maybe I need to start a website devoted to this stuff.

Zoom.
 
 
Liloudini
22:44 / 13.08.02
Though I use to buy books in 2nd hand I never found any interesting things inside them made or left by the previous owners. Signatures, notes, dates are the only thing until now.
But there's one thing that bothers me allot in a 2nd hand book: the smell.
It's always different and sometimes it's disturbing and not particularly pleasant. It brings me the other presence with a particular strength!!
 
 
Margin Walker
22:56 / 13.08.02
I forgot about this one (written on the LP Soundtrack of "Love Story") is printed "Love means never having to say you're sorry--"

(and underneath, written in lipstick) "And friendship means getting away with gifts like this!"

I found it at a record sale, so I doubt if they're friends anymore (whoever they were).
 
 
Loomis
09:20 / 14.08.02
I find the personal dedications can be quite interesting, ranging from "happy birthday" to a page-long rave about how good the book is, etc. I once found a book with a long message telling the lucky birthday person how much this book meant to the giver and why ze's chosen it for this particular person, yadda yadda, and here it was in the second hand shop. Thing is, the book was only recently published. So I guess the recipient wasn't quite as moved by the book as the buyer was.

On a similar note, it's bittersweet when I'm looking in my regular second-hand haunts and suddenly find a whole load of stuff I want. My first impulse is "great - finally there's new stock", then you think of some professor who probably just died and no one wanted their lifetime collection of literature.
 
 
No star here laces
10:01 / 14.08.02
In a copy of "Blonde Genius" (a singularly un-titillating 'thriller' about a girls school for criminals) I found an 8-page leaflet from around the 1940s (I'd guess) advertising various forms of contraception. All of which were some form of re-usable sheath along with the bewildering array of accoutrements necessary to keep these horrific devices functioning. Everything shown in it was made from those odd pre-war materials like "vulcanised rubber" "bakelite" "shellac". The re-usable sheaths sounded as though you'd have to be fucking a vise to feel anything through their "sturdy and reliable" material.
 
 
rizla mission
10:09 / 14.08.02
"shellac"? crikey.

I found a piece of old bacon in a library book once, which was totally horrible, as you can probably imagine.
 
 
Saveloy
11:13 / 14.08.02
Lyra:

"I found an 8-page leaflet from around the 1940s (I'd guess) advertising various forms of contraception."

That just sounds too good to be true, are you sure you're not making it up?

Rizla:

"I found a piece of old bacon in a library book once,"

That just sounds too good to be true, etc. I'm picturing someone carefully laying an uncooked slice of streaky onto the page, leaving an inch or two flopping over the top, bookmark-style.
 
 
Justin Brief
12:02 / 14.08.02
Bruce Robinson's Uncle Monty was famously partly inspired by a self-published book of poems found in a Bloomsbury bookshop, in which he found several sepia photographs of boy 'dancers'. And being harrassed by Zeffirelli on the set of Romeo and Juliet.
 
 
The Apple-Picker
16:13 / 14.08.02
I found a piece of old bacon in a library book once, which was totally horrible, as you can probably imagine.

Why, on Earth, did you eat it???
 
 
The Apple-Picker
16:17 / 14.08.02
Yesterday, I went to Goodwill and bought 8 or 9 more books. I really can't stop myself. One that I was going to buy, but decided against, was a blank book with Beatrix Potter-type bunnies on it. On the inside was a dedication from a mom to her son--asking him to write in this so that she could share his day with him. It was so sad. Were his parents divorced and he never got to see his mom? Did she just work all day long, so they never got to talk? And then, that there was just one entry in his rickety little boy handwriting. What happened to him? Did he neglect to write more entries to his mom? Did he die?

It made me sad.
 
 
Bad Horse
16:27 / 14.08.02
I found a whole lot of dried musshies in a book, forget the title. It was a library book but to my shame I still have it somewhere. I wonder why the mushroom drier took the book back with his stash in it? Perhaps it was a deliberate gift.
 
 
Knight's Move
16:49 / 14.08.02
I've found various postcards and pictures as bookmarks. I try to leave them in the book and they often highlight things I needed to know, or that have some relevance to me when I reach them. Which is nice. I once found someone's bank details but had too much of a conscience to see what I could do with them.

The best find was a pair of four-leaved clovers in a book on witchcraft, which I took with me in an old notebook. After one rave I went to I found they'd been destroyed and whilst we had been in London two really lucky things happened (we found a bit of hash lying on the station we had set out from, in the place we had been sitting, when we went back that way thus saving us from running out, and we almost crashed on the way back but didn't) I like to think they were one shot lucky charms of the sort found in RPGs, destroyed after use, but very useful at that moment.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
18:09 / 14.08.02
I found several dozen squashed gnats in a kid's book once. And in a textbook I found a slip of paper with somebody's name written on it repeatedly, surrounded by many many crosses (Christian-type crosses, not kisses) and a sort of squiggly thing that might have been a sigil. Slightly creepy.
 
 
Ganesh
18:39 / 14.08.02
On a related note, I'd warn the curious away from buying second-hand Anatomy textbooks. They smell strongly of formaldehyde and invariable contain numerous small shrivelly bits of fascia (subcutaneous fat - initially squelchy, dries to a crisp) which, during dissection, get everywhere...
 
 
Carl La Fong
21:07 / 14.08.02
The greatest thing I ever found in a book was in a paperback of ghost stories that I bought at a store in Hollywood, Florida. It wasn't until after I bought it that I read the inscription and found that my Dad had owned the book three years before he met my Mom.
And now I can't find the damned thing!
 
 
Jack Fear
23:20 / 14.08.02
A contribution PM'd to me by a dear friend of the board who still lurks, but no longer posts:

(in a paperback edition of the New Falcon THE GOLDEN BOOK book: ) a hand-drawn traditional sigil with a dried semen stain in the center.
 
 
Jack Fear
23:24 / 14.08.02
Carl: nice one!

Several years after my father's death, I was renting part of an old house in Ithaca, New York. While on a visit home, I was going through some of his old books--and found, written on the flyleaf of several of them, the address of the very house where I was living, where he had lived forty years previous, when he was a student at Cornell.
 
 
MissLenore
03:16 / 15.08.02
I personally hate it when I go to read a second hand book in bed, and cookie crumbs (or what I'm assuming are cookie crumbs) fall out and get in my eyes. For Christ's sake people, stop eating food overtop of your books!
 
 
.
13:06 / 15.08.02
This is something I'd somewhat fortunately forgotten about until now... Found in an old-fashioned red London phonebox- a number of "Escort Service" calling cards, which make compelling reading in themselves ("VIP tropical fruit bath" and "Strictly for Business Gentlemen and The Artistically Inclined- La Courtisane Avec Un Coeur"), with this astonishing missive scribbled on the back of them (some in black biro'd block capitals, some lapsing into an illegible scrawl):

Card 1- "THE AMERICANS WHITE ONES USED A different way of life to Black people in afro Carribbean told the dread brother there was plenty of work back in America so they sent there wifes kids and othe members of the family to work the the Pacific ocean f coconut little did they know THE tanks were slaves who secretly kidnapped all the woman kid old fok the one hosd (?) were once the men that would be the chief medicine man tribal council were onship they were bashed beaten drained and Kept as prisoner once they arrived in the states they were sold as slaves yes i wthe (?) 18th century conned by there own people like you you old liar trater till a man like Aberdeen Lincoln (sic) came along and Banished Slavery and put in jail people like”

Card 2- “you old security guard because there would never have been been slavery in the 18th century that was just 300 years ago yet if it were not for people like you and the Jews in Hitler time just like you THESE Gen”

Card 3- “300 years ago if it were not for for people like Black old security Guard like you they would never had slaver or black white divide Apartieded IN Hilters NaZIs TIMES THE Jews who just like you told lies were just as guilty as you by telling the Gestapo where the Jews were hiding from them once the Jews were caught or should have stayed away really their were only about seven thousand still Hiding in all off urope and the middle east the exact sane things the yanks used agains the black you see the nazis sot (?) the Idea of the yanks to catch black poor people who were really scare as this was the 1700 1724 being a very dense people are a very dense people controllore by the iNtelligenzia at the time these People killed more Poor black People who didn’t have a clue what was going on but thank to the Lincoln ENIP Been the FRENCK THE SCOTS”

Card 4- “and most Greatry thank to some of my great ancestor charles carnagie wwho owned us steal JP ROCKEFELLA THE Wellows (?) Burroughs and Wells FAMILY Fount (?) who all donate FIVE BILLION Pound sterling eg FOR THE RELEASE OF Nelson Mandela AND the Collaspes of COMMUSSISM”

A fifth card had also been ripped down, but it was blank.
 
 
No star here laces
13:47 / 15.08.02
Okay Sav, ya rumbled me. It was actually about 40 pages long, and more of a booklet, and I found it in a skip along with aforementioned book, not actually in it. But who'd be pedantic about that, eh? It really was too good to be true. Not sure what happened to it, mind.
 
 
Saveloy
15:09 / 15.08.02
"But who'd be pedantic about that, eh?"

Indeed, what a fantastic find. I'm glad to know that such a thing existed *and* that there was a book called "Blonde Genius". Gutted that you lost the booklet (?), I was going to ask you if you could scan a page or two in.
 
 
Earlier than I thought
19:28 / 10.10.03
Once bought a Jerry Cornelius paperback and idly noted some scribble in the front. Last year I re-read it and realised to my shame that it was Michael Moorcock's signature.
 
  

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