Weirdest thing you found in a library book or used book

[unsinkable]

I started a thread like this years and years ago when I had I library book* that was filled with hair.

Every few pages had multiple hairs...short, wiry hairs.

Hundreds of hairs.

There was NO WAY this was an accident. It had to be deliberate.

And I think it was pubic hair. 

Shudder. Gag. Gagshudder. 

So...what have you found?

*It was a Bernard Cornwell book

[mmasc]

🤢I knew I shouldn’t have opened this thread....welp, no more library books for me! 🤣

[HomeAgain]

Um, ew!

Weirdest thing I found was a letter of dismissal from the local zoo.  The guy was fired for negligence resulting in the deaths of 14 animals, including a rare one.

[AbcdeDooDah]

🤢 What did you do ?

I found a booger.

 

 

[Junie]

Ick.

The weirdest thing I've found is an Uno card.

[unsinkable]

11 minutes ago, AbcdeDooDah said:

🤢 What did you do ?

I found a booger.

 

 

I put it in a plastic grocery bag and took it back to the library. I told the librarian what was inside and she looked at a few spots, saw the hairs and discarded the book. Then we ordered me another copy for another library! With no hair!

[gardenmom5]

I got a bunch of garden books from the library - there was one that had beautiful photographs. someone had cut out pictures.

[Kidlit]

Having worked for several years at a public library, I prefer to not think about it. 😱

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Yuck!!!

 

Not too weird, but I bought a huge load of used books from a local retired homeschooler.  While flipping through one to assign it to my kids for reading, I found an old letter, written but never mailed, from original book owner's child to a cousin.  I mailed it back to the original book owner and she was happy to have the blast from the past!

[AK_Mom4]

Airline Tickets

Back in the day of paper tickets, I found an unused set of airline tickets for flights the next week inside a book I checked out.  I took them back to the library and the librarian called the previous patron whose name was on the tickets apparently.  Happy Ending!

[Chelli]

An old Christmas card that you used a cigarette to "ignite" the design and it revealed who it was from. I'd never seen anything like it, but it was super cool.

 

 

[Lorien]

Not necessarily weird, but my Dad bought some books from an estate sale and one had an inscription written to a soldier, dated during WWII. Inside the book someone had pinned a swatch of pink silk. 

[Calm37]

We bought some used children's picture books at a library sale. The author of one had not only signed it, but in pencil had filled the front blank page with a drawing of the book's main character. 

[Miss Tick]

Here's one to balance out some of the "ick". I was chatting with an uncle and he showed me a book his brother had just given him (another uncle). I was interested and started flipping through the book and found $140 scattered through the book in various denominations. No-one there knew if it came from the gift-er uncle or from someone before him. Pre-texting days so I never heard the resolution. Nor did I get a finder's fee!

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

Gross....🤢 

Mine’s just weird. We found a bookmark in a children’s book that was made by a friend’s daughter. The girl who made the bookmark was by then 20 years old but had made it when she was 8 or so. At that point they lived in a different state. (Bordering but still over an hour away.) They have never been to our library and there isn’t ILL between states. She remembered making the bookmarks as a child but the family hadn’t seen any in a few years. I’d be interesting to know how the that little bookmark survived 12 years and travel between states to end up in our small town library book. 

[unsinkable]

I love these stories, even the icky ones!

[Kanin]

3 hours ago, Chelli said:

An old Christmas card that you used a cigarette to "ignite" the design and it revealed who it was from. I'd never seen anything like it, but it was super cool.

 

 

That is super cool! Not smoking, but still, the idea is pretty awesome 😄 

[Kareni]

I found three five dollar bills once; I've also found the occasional receipt, boarding pass, bookmark, and tissue.

I posted back in 2014 about my most intriguing find.  I'll recopy the post here:

 "Today (20 June 2014) while browsing the old book section of a local thrift store, I found something nifty in an old logic book:

A University of California, Schedule of Final Exams for April - May, 1915

It's ninety-nine years old and is in wonderful condition; it looks as though it could have been printed yesterday.

It's about 11 by 12 inches in size and printed on both sides.  So, some items of interest:

The vast majority of exams were three hours long.  (My husband who attended UCB in the seventies said that was true then as well.)

To name just a few (amongst the hundreds listed), there were exams in:

Civil Engineering

Geology

Hygiene

Celtic

Mining

Greek

Oriental Languages

Mechanics

Sanskrit

Jurisprudence - X

English - X

Zoology - X

Philosophy - X

Chemistry

Agriculture: Viticulture

Domestic Art

Latin (many, many sections)

I've marked with an X the exams the owner of this paper was scheduled to take.

The final exam for Subject A was scheduled for Monday, April 26, at 2:00pm.  My husband said that Subject A was still offered when he attended and was commonly referred to as Bonehead English.

My husband went looking for, and found, exam times for Professor Hildebrand's Chemistry classes.  This professor who was teaching classes in 1914 was still a member of the department some sixty years later when my husband was there.

And, no, we don't live in California.  So this paper has done some traveling in both time and distance."

Regards,

Kareni

[KungFuPanda]

My daughter once had a used Latin book.  Inside it, a previous owner had written "Trust me, switch to Spanish."

[Shoeless]

A $5 bill in a book I bought for a quarter. 

[OH_Homeschooler]

Gosh, I love my Kindle.

[Petrichor]

A note from an estranged relative to DS. Left in a children's book that was on hold under my name. Library holds are in a public area, and estranged relative lives in our city and visits our library.

He thought it was hilarious that someone would leave a note from a relative in a book, and didn't realize it was written by his relative, or for him to read.

[Rachel]

I’ve found receipts but nothing interesting. 

[Guest]

On 3/2/2019 at 10:28 AM, unsinkable said:

I put it in a plastic grocery bag and took it back to the library. I told the librarian what was inside and she looked at a few spots, saw the hairs and discarded the book. Then we ordered me another copy for another library! With no hair!

“I’d like to put in a request for a hair-free copy of  Les Miserables, please.” 

[marbel]

I don't remember anything very interesting.  I have this feeling I found a note of some kind once, but it must not have been all that interesting.

I use leftover pieces of  pretty card stock for bookmarks and sometimes I just leave those in the book when I return it.  I hope they bring a little jolt of happiness to the next person(s) who check out the book.  (We have a LOT of card stock/scrapbook paper around here from past crafting projects.)

[Acadie]

Found in a book in a Catholic school library--a love letter from a priest I knew to a woman I didn't know.

It was pretty tame and I couldn't tell exactly what their relationship was from the letter. But there was no question the feelings he expressed were not platonic.

Amy

[alisoncooks]

Other than library receipts, the only thing I've found are sticky notes with book recs. Those are always fun; something like, "If you liked this, you'll love ___."

[Miss Tick]

2 hours ago, alisoncooks said:

Other than library receipts, the only thing I've found are sticky notes with book recs. Those are always fun; something like, "If you liked this, you'll love ___."

I love that idea!