Found in a Book

Posted by Erin M.

Recently, the Greenwood Branch of the Seattle Public Library displayed a remarkable collection of bookmarks in their front window, an assortment of tickets, photos, bumper stickers, stamps, playing cards, feathers, postcards, really anything that could fit easily between two pages. Individually, these objects aren’t terribly interesting or important, but when brought together as a collection, it becomes a fascinating snapshot of human life.

I am the first to admit to using anything and everything as a bookmark, usually grabbing the closest thing in reach and absent mindedly shoving it into my book, anything of course but an actual bookmark. Apparently this human habit has been going on for at least the last century. Bookseller, Michael Popek has been finding “treasures within treasures,” or small pieces of memorabilia tucked inside books for years, and since 2007 he has been sharing that collection on his blog www.forgottenbookmarks.com. Now, some of his most interesting finds can be found in the book:

Forgotten Bookmarks: A Bookseller’s Collection of Odd Things Lost Between the Pages.

Reading this book almost feels like you have opened your sister’s diary or found a stash of your great grandfather’s love letters in the basement, only this is a print museum of forbidden but forgotten treasures that provide a small glimpse into the lives of strangers. Some of my favorite finds include a love poem written in 1975 titled “Walking in Dreams,” a remarkable collection of photographs depicting the aftermath of Mount Pelée’s eruption in 1902, and an admittance ticket to the Indianapolis 500 of May 1954 signed by Tony Hulman and Wilbur Shaw.

A book like this doesn’t give you a full story, just hints of a story, or better yet, it offers discoverability. Have you ever walked through the stacks of the library looking for nothing in particular, and you come across a gem that you would have never thought to look for? My experience with this book is much the same. The photos depicting the aftermath of Mount Pelée were so striking, and I frankly new very little about this devastating historical disaster, but luckily the library came through for me, and I was able to discover another gem, The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster that Claimed 30,000 Lives. As I read through this book, I began to think of those photographs, the person who took them, and wondered what story lay beneath them?

I found myself facing the same curiosity as I gazed upon Greenwood’s display of ephemera. What stories lie behind these photos? Is anyone looking for any of these lost treasures? And then I realized, this is what I love about books and libraries. The quest for knowledge is never done. The stories are never finished, and the treasures within our libraries can never fully be discovered. What stories have you left behind between the pages a book? What treasures have you uncovered?