Things found in books
While at the LA Times Festival of Books in April I was sorting through a box of used books. I picked up one and an airline boarding pass fell out. It was for a flight from Liberia to Texas. That’s interesting, I thought, who’d be flying from a war-ravaged west African country to the States - perhaps someone fleeing the turmoil for a new life? Who knows?
That boarding pass got me thinking about the objects found inside books. So we asked our booksellers what they had found inside books and received some amazing answers. Used booksellers spend hours going through books in order to catalogue their inventory in terms of pricing and creating an accurate description for their online listings.
Shopping lists, bus tickets, business cards and theatre tickets are just the boring stuff. The interesting things would be a diamond ring, a Mickey Mantle 1952 rookie baseball card, a baby’s tooth, a Christmas card signed by Frank Baum, some original handwritten poetry, and $40,000. Imagine opening a run-of-the-mill microwave cookbook and finding $40,000?
