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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?

#201

Post by sammalloy »

Great article. I laughed when the card for the dentist fell out of the book, because I also use them as bookmarks.

The strangest thing I ever found in a book wasn’t so much a physical item, it was more of a synchronicity of sorts.

During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, after a jury acquitted the police of beating Rodney King, San Francisco experienced a smaller riot that lasted for six hours or so, resulting in the selected looting of downtown, and the then mayor imposing a curfew and limiting movement for the night.

I remember that I had picked up a copy of Nathanael West's novel "The Day of the Locust" (1939) about a week before the riots. I was downtown when the riots broke out, and I had just gotten to the end of the book when the riots occurred in the story just as they were happening all around me.

If you think that’s strange, it gets even stranger. In the book, the riots occur in Los Angeles during a film premiere and the narrator is surprised because it reminds him of a painting he made titled "The Burning of Los Angeles".

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

#203

Post by melony »

kyleblarson wrote: post #165
ortusdux wrote: post #78

I once took a critical thinking course and bought the textbook 2nd hand from the college bookstore. A week or two in, I noticed half of a sentence written in the margin. As the professor started teaching the topic from that page, he rhetorically asked a question, did not get an answer, and then answered himself with the sentence from the book. I filliped ahead and found that the entire book was annotated with all of…

I took an intro econ course in college in 1999. The professor gave us his past tests to use as practice and some of them dated back to the late 1950's.

Was there supply-demand curve pushing in the 1950s?

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

#204

Post by grapescheesee »

Years ago, I went into this third hand style book shop. It is located in the bottom of a church basement in the Midwest. It is the type of place you can get a grocery bag full of books for $30. Oddly, they also had some full sets of various encyclopedia books for free. I thought it could be an interesting set to have around so I grabbed one. It was a New Illustrated Columbia Encyclopedia 1975.

Months later, I was looking something up for fun. It was not a book I had touched yet, and I found the following letter hand written on a sheet of lined notebook paper. I found it oddly interesting and tried looking the names a few times. I did not get anywhere near the article story, wish I had.

“Being of sound mind and body, declare this to be my last will and testament.

To my mother, I leave nothing.

To my father, I leave Farrah and the wish to be cremated and scattered over aspen, Colorado.

To Rhonda Sollberger, I leave my cat, puffer, my rabbit, Oliver, my model house collection, and my stereo.

To Tony I leave Karen.

To Karen I leave Tony.

To Gail, I leave my teddy bear, and my rainbow sweater (She’ll grow into it soon.)

To Heather Bright, I leave my Canada Dry can, and my tequila bottle.

To Mark Frang, I leave him feeling guilty and gray skico. Also some of my ashes are to be sprinkled in his room, to remind him the sad that I am not here is all his fault.

To Adheimme Boman, I leave all the items in my play house that belong to her. 13235 is the combination.

To Todd Glass, I leave my Muppit poster (It’s just his type!)

To my Grandparents, I leave fond memories.

Signed. Jeanne Gammon Witness. Rhonda Sollberger“

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

#205

Post by ThorInAVillage »

We used to visit a village in Pakistan because my dad's family lived there. I hated going there because it was a village and really boring with nothing to do there. One day (as a ten year old) I decided to go snooping at my uncle's house because I was extremely bored. While going through some pantry closets I found a Thor comic book! In a village in Pakistan! We're talking about the late 1970s. That was my first introduction to comic books!

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

#207

Post by ktpsns »

tshaddox wrote: post #192
ortusdux wrote: post #78

I once took a critical thinking course and bought the textbook 2nd hand from the college bookstore. A week or two in, I noticed half of a sentence written in the margin. As the professor started teaching the topic from that page, he rhetorically asked a question, did not get an answer, and then answered himself with the sentence from the book. I filliped ahead and found that the entire book was annotated with all of…

So my version of that story is less analog and arguably less academically honest. I had a somewhat challenging mid-level math class in college where after each homework assignment and test the professor would give us a URL to a PDF of his scanned handwritten completed version of the work. The URL path was something like /math-321/2019/fall/test-1.pdf, and the professor diligently made sure that each file wasn't avail…

I did the same, shared with my fellows, got denounced, got a written warning by the university and the faculty hated me afterwards for "hacking".

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

#208

Post by _dain_ »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #129
gostsamo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

no it's terrible, see: https://danluu.com/su3su2u1/hpmor/

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

#209

Post by bondolo »

I found an old sheep intestine condom in a 19th century engineering reference book. The pages where I found it had been water damaged, likely, I later learned, from the condom having been washed after use and put in the book to dry and then forgotten. Condoms were expensive at the time and frequently reused.

I did not keep either the condom or the book.

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

#210

Post by selimthegrim »

smm11 wrote: post #90

A few weeks back I took a book to a nearby Little Library. I hadn't opened the book since 1987, when I was in college, but held onto it for reasons. Right before I dropped it off in exchange for another I wanted, I thumbed through for some unknown reason. Inside was a note from a girl I knew in high school, who I'd drifted apart from somewhat. It was agreeing to my plan to: Have her move 2000 miles to where I was goi…

Now that you’ve got all of HN on tenterhooks what happened since?
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