Culture

What's the weirdest thing you've ever found in a book?

06 Apr 2021

Photo has been used for illustrative purposes.

I don't mean to get too personal here, but here I go: What's the strangest thing you've ever found in a book? Maybe in a library book, or in a used book you bought, or even in a book you've had on the shelf for years and had forgotten about?

And what is the strangest thing you've ever tucked into a book, perhaps as a makeshift bookmark?

I'm thinking about these things for two reasons.

The first reason is that a reader named Bonnie Anderson wrote me, wondering if other people find remnants of food in library books, as she often does. (I have to say, I sincerely hope not. And I'm guessing that librarians also hope not.)

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"I often find evidence of things that previous readers have been consuming while they were reading," Anderson wrote me.

"I try to guess what the substance was: Doritos (the most common debris item found), coffee, cola, breadcrumbs. I thought this would be a funny question to ask your readers: What is the most common thing that previous readers of a book have left a residue of?"

And round about the time that I got Anderson's e-mail, I also saw a story in the trade journal Kirkus, in which it was reported that a librarian in Pittsburgh discovered a very disturbing bookmark left in a book. The bookmark was (brace yourself) a dead snake in a plastic bag.

That is definitely worse than Doritos crumbs.

Have you ever found anything as weird as a fried egg in a book?

The Kirkus story also referenced a story in the AbeBooks newsletter about other unusual things librarians have found in books — including a slice of bacon (raw, I think) and a fried egg (different book, even though you'd think they be together).

Once I started down that rabbit hole, I couldn't stop. I found a Publishers Weekly story from 2017 in which librarians were asked what they found in books — oh, long-suffering librarians!

Their report: so much food. Pop Tarts, a raw shrimp, French fries, bologna and pickles. Also, an entire taco.

They also found personal and sometimes incriminating stuff: tickets to plays, paychecks, divorce papers. Also, money. Sometimes quite a bit of money.

Deeper into the rabbit hole I went. (Nobody has reported finding a rabbit in a book, by the way.)

The Paris Review has also written about this, mentioning plenty of disgusting things I won't repeat but also this rather charming find: a copy of "The Star-Spangled Banner," "written in the spidery hand of someone either very old or very young."

I know that books are not sacred objects, exactly, but I also know that despite all of the lovely bookmarks I've been given over the years (including a brass Frank Lloyd Wright bookmark just this past Christmas), I usually end up stuffing whatever I have at hand into the book to mark my place.

This never includes snakes, or Doritos, though. Certainly not shrimp, which I would definitely eat.

For me, it's usually a photograph, a greeting card, a news release, a subscription card that fell out of a magazine, or a grocery store receipt. I am starting to feel very boring. Where is that fried egg when I need it?

And I am almost afraid to ask you these questions now, after what I saw on the internet, but I am going to ask anyway: What's the oddest thing you've ever used as a bookmark? And what is the oddest thing you've found in a book?

Write me at [email protected] and include your name and city and I'll include your confession in a follow-up column. If I can bear it. (Keep in mind I'm pretty squeamish about snakes.)

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