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What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

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Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#121
A bar I frequented had books on every shelf on every wall. When visiting I usually wouldn't touch them, but once in awhile after a beverage I'd grab a random one and peek inside.

One I opened had on the inside cover someone's full name and social security number.

I brought it up to the bartender so they could rip out that page and throw it away.

Was there a time when putting your SSN inside a book was common?

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#122

I realize it is not the same as finding a friend, but I recently found five crisp $20 bills in a used logic text book at an Amvets thrift store. I opened the book because it was written by Irving Copi, who wrote my undergrad logic text. I was paranoid it was counterfeit, but it was very much real money. To make things better, the first $20 I spent was to get a pizza and the employee said a mistake happened at the piz…

Cash is always interesting. Cash in a logic book too, that seems like clean money!

One time in Japan there was a car sitting in front of my apartment for months, nobody used it, nobody touched it. It seemed abandoned. It definitely looked out of place due to its age as well, though it was in good shape.

Eventually me and the pals got amused, and annoyed, and started to do funny stuff you'd only do if amused and annoyed by an abandoned car. Like, trying the doors on one restless day while you wait for the yakimo hours to arrive.

Unlocked!

A bunch of sports gear, cassettes.

Hatchback?

Sports gear...uh...sexy times stuff...and uh...a purse.

A peek in the purse. My first time seeing thick bundles of cash, basically $100s! Stacks of 'em!

I watched enough movies to know that loose $100s, found loosely, may be OK to take, or even just to ask somebody about.

But bundles, in a purse, in an abandoned car, in a neighborhood where we had heard some organized crime rumors...nope.

Creepy af though. We wondered if she had run away, disappeared, what.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#123
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want this story to continue, and for each of the five twenties that you spend, some increasingly elaborate and unlikely good thing happens.

I went through a couple years where I was finding cash kind of a lot. Not life changing amounts, but something. At work in the secure area when locking up I found a 10 inside the door. I didn't know what to do with it so I tacked it on the bulletin board by the door. Really obvious. Nobody took it for 2 weeks (which is kind of remarkable), so I took it back to buy lunch. I found a twenty in the snow on the street in…

> At work in the secure area when locking up I found a 10 inside the door. I didn't know what to do with it so I tacked it on the bulletin board by the door. Really obvious. Nobody took it for 2 weeks (which is kind of remarkable), so I took it back to buy lunch.

When I've worked in secure areas, I've never had the slightest concern about theft. We even did an experiment where we left a couple $1 bills out on the table in the coffee area for a week... anybody could have picked them up, especially the security guards and janitors who roamed the building at night with nobody else around, but they just stayed there.

Working in that sort of high-trust environment is really, really nice.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#124

When I was 13, I checked out Steven Levy's "Hackers" from the public library. Inside I found a handwritten note from a 14 year old boy which said something to the effect of "If you like stuff like this, call me!" So I did! We ended up being friends for a couple years and exchanging C64 software and talking about nerd stuff.

that's a great story. before the internet there were no easy ways to find others who were into computers. as far as i can remember i was the only one in my school who would hang out in the schools computer room after classes. i am pretty sure there were other kids in other schools that were interested in computers, but i had no way of finding them. meeting someone like that would have been great.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#126
post #95

I bought a Ti-92 graphing calculator in the early 2000's for very cheap, couple dollars, secondhand. I found this odd because at the time they still went for a lot of money. Inside the very large battery door[1] I found a person's name and phone number. I thought about contacting them to see if it was stolen, but first I googled the name and found a several month old local news article about the person dying in a hel…

Sounds like an idea for a kids book, “The Haunted Calculator”

Every calculation returns 666DEAD

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#128

I realize it is not the same as finding a friend, but I recently found five crisp $20 bills in a used logic text book at an Amvets thrift store. I opened the book because it was written by Irving Copi, who wrote my undergrad logic text. I was paranoid it was counterfeit, but it was very much real money. To make things better, the first $20 I spent was to get a pizza and the employee said a mistake happened at the piz…

My father once lost quite a large amount of cash that was supposed to be used for an overseas family trip. It was a very awkward situation in our family, because he had the slight suspicion that one of us children could have taken the money. Luckily, about a year later my brother opened a large book on seafaring from my fathers shelf and found an envelope with exactly the missing sum. Only then my father remembered that he had hidden the money there and we could procees with our holiday plannings.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#129
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you didn't cast any random spells scrawled in your Advanced Potion-Making book. Sectumsempra is a nono, I hear.

Recently I read HPMOR and this paragraph was one of many delights there: The cold in the room seemed to deepen. “A sixth-year Gryffindor cast a curse at one of my more promising students, a sixth-year Slytherin.” Harry swallowed. “What...sort of curse?” And the fury on Professor Quirrell’s face was no longer contained. “Why bother to ask an unimportant question like that, Mr Potter? Our friend the sixth-year Gryffind…

Do you recommend HMOR? I’ve never heard of it, but the Wikipedia page sounded interesting
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