Found in Books February 2022

 Our Found in Books collection this time features a vaccination card circa 1971.  "Mike" a red Irish Setter received his rabies vaccine.  

Why yes, I do have a restless urge to write.

And someone cut out the images of Tarzan book covers from a calendar - more muscles and tan skin, please.

A poor drawing of a fancy chandelier, photo booth strip, and map of an Indian temple are some of the other found ephemera in the past few months.

Found in Books, May 2021

It's been an entire year since I last posted photos from my "Found in Books" file.  This edition's presentation from May 2020 to May 2021 features a lot of the classic FIB material:  Ticket stubs, boarding passes, photo booth strips, naked guy photo, drawings, travel brochures, letters, receipts, and photocopied book pages.

Some of the more unusual findings are a JC Penney full-page color ad for $8 "antifreeze flannel shirts"; a postage-paid postcard to the Washington State Employment Service (a.k.a. "unemployment office") with a doodle and some notes; a yellow index card with two-sided lists of 61 birds seen in July 2006 in shaky ballpoint pen; a currency exchange rate card with pesos and dollars from Pardo's Gift Shop in Mazatlan, probably from the fifties or sixties; and a ticket to the haunted house, "The House that Eats People," sponsored by NEAT, a non-profit corp.  

 

There was also a faded pasteboard sign wisely advising, "Pay Your Grocer FIRST.  When you pay your bills, give your Grocer FIRST MONEY.  He supplies you with what you need most--FOOD;" an order form for Modern Taxidermy Books; a Red Cross card for someone who completed CPR - ADULT.  And a poignant list with two columns:  "Observable Change" (try to be more organized and neater, try to [down arrow] internet porn) and "What is Changing"  ([up arrow] weight, [up arrow] road rage)."

Pistil Photo Essay

Here's a look into a small online book business.

Our entrance off the alley.

Meet Whiskey, our new bookstore kitty, age 5 months.

Stacks waiting to be shelved.

Sean's stack of books to read on his desk.

Recycled blank books and toaster boy.

Artwork by James Koehnline, R. Crumb, and Jon Strongbow.

Bookmark collection and tiny books.

Plenty of reading material in the throne room.

Found in Books - Spring 2020 Edition

It's spring cleaning time, and time to empty our "Found in Books" folder and start anew.

This time we have some of the old standbys--  bookmarks, invitations, photographs, boarding passes, transit tickets, receipts, drawings--  plus some new book inserts that we haven't seen before:  computer programming cards, an information request card for "Nuclear Diodes, Inc."

Postcards, early computer printout, bar mitzvah invitation, drawing of train on tracing paper, and pamphlet for the Sixth International Congress of Radiation Research.

There was also a pink note stuck into a book titled, Mud Pies & Other Recipes that said, "I always thought it was a waste of good pie in a  pie throwing but I would enjoy seeing this one, wouldn't you?"

A note on the back of this owl/deer/heart artwork says, "For the best couple ever."

"After seeing children in grammar school at play, doing very active activities, I've come to the conclusion that childrens wear can be very simple and still have that 'darling' look."  This paper titled  "Field Trip to Grammar School" received an "A".

This Dodge Dart was serviced regularly with detailed record-keeping.

Someone had a very large and carefully-kept Agnes Moorehead clipping collection.

Agnes, Baby!  She was Endora on "Bewitched."

Found In Books - Spring Edition

Once again it's time to show off some of the things we've found in books that have crossed our desks here at Pistil Books. 

Our treasures this time include pressed flowers and leaves, lottery ticket, "Lighter of the Month Club" stickers from Bic, bookmarks (of course), a sheet on the "Seven Factors of Awakening", a Christmas gift card from France, a sheet on drying flowers, a French publisher's advertisement for books on "Esoterisme", an entry form for a drawing, a boarding pass, something written with a fountain pen and a flourish and a penny stamp, a Book-of-the-Month Club invoice, lyrics to a song: "It's time to get us a clue / It's time to take off the mask / It's time to turn it around / It's time to learn to relax....", a chart of emotions having to do with anger, disgust, sad, happy, surprise, and fear; someone's collection of clippings on Max Ernst, some artwork including a slightly racy drawing and one of rose paintings, a form for bindery instructions for a library, and some patterns for Captain Ludlow's jacket.

There's a tiny pointing arrow captioned, "Ass for Cash."

Found in Books

It's been a while since I've posted photos of some of the ephemera found in books, and the envelope holding such objects has grown fat.  

Included this time are the usual bookmarks (from bookstores and torn from handy sheets of paper), gift tags, drawings, tickets, and personal notes.  In one card someone writes, "Now that I know from the medical examiner's report the severity of her AVM condition, I wonder if M--- knew or at least had a premonition of fatality.  Just after her first MRI she intensified her study of Buddhism which focuses on preparing in this life for one's next life."

Remember phone bills?  Spanking, cirque & sensuality, oh my!

Bookmarks from shops, The Ten Commandments (from St. Jude's Ranch for Children), and Legend of the Raven are just a few of the ways people keep their place between pages.

Cards from card catalogs... as rare as phone bills now.

Found in Books

More Found in Books

The program for Raymond Burr's Memorial Service from 1993

A lovely drawing.

So many things pressed between pages.

There was also a letter to Dan Savage.

Found in Books

Found most often in book are bookmarks--those advertising bookstores, or decorative bookmarks of one sort or another.  Then there's the bookmark of convenience--ephemera either forgotten or tucked away between pages for safekeeping:  napkins, grocery lists, to-do lists, homework, recipes, money, a silver certificate, poems, love letters, condolences, tickets, boarding passes, snapshots, drawings, pressed flowers, newspaper clippings, greeting cards, postcards, comic strips, invitations, a valentine, calling cards, membership cards, coupons, letters, prayer cards, business cards, a motion sickness bag, lottery tickets, pamphlets, a page torn from a calendar, a sheet of music, a report card, envelopes, photo booth strips, doodles, notes, a quotation written in inexpert calligraphy on an index card ("There can be no rainbow without a cloud and a storm--"  The Wind in the Willows), receipts.  Some recent favorites include a bunch of hotel receipts, diplomatic invitations, and calling cards from Paris in the sixties found in a set of nice hardback Proust volumes and a poem written in ballpoint on a page torn from a spiral notebook found in You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense:

Fuck Suck Shit  Piss Fuck Suck When you feel Your life Is Zero Charles Bukowski Becomes Your hero

In an earlier post I wrote about making collages from Golden Book publications.  Here is a link to some wonderful postcards made by sometimes Pistil shelver (or un-shelver), Andrew Bleeker:  Alice Blue Review

Reading Notes

I am about two thirds the way through The Best American Short Stories 2009.  So far I've not made any great discoveries of writers whose work I want to pursue.  The two stories I like best are both set in China:  "NowTrends" by Karl Taro Greenfeld, and "A Man Like Him" by Yiyun Li.  I'm also reading the current issue of Harper's Magazine, which has a great editorial about Haiti.