Not Pit-worthy, but pissing me off mightily nonetheless.
My husband went to the library to pick up a book he’d reserved. He got home, sat down, opened it, and said, “I smell something really floral. What is it?”
It was the book. It smells like someone had used one of those obnoxious perfume strips from a fashion magazine as a bookmark. And it’s some really dreadful heavy perfume like Obsession or something. The book is closed and sitting 10 feet away from me and I can smell it. Ga-a-a-a-ah!
My mother-in-law is one of those incredibly scent-sensitive people. If she’d picked up this book, she’d be dead of an asthma attack by now.
I briefly worked as a page at my local library when I was in high school. We frequently got books back that smelled strongly of cigarette smoke. (No big, we just aired them out until the smell dissipated.) But once we got a book back that smelled like it had been left at the bottom of the cat box for about two months. It reeked more strongly of cat shit than some actual cat boxes I’ve had the misfortune to smell.
I will never forget the look on the head librarian’s face when summoned to examine the problem. With a slight wrinkle of her nose, she held it up as one would hold up a soiled handkerchief, and pronounced, “This one is going straight to the restoration department.”
This sent me off into uncontrollable giggles, for some reason. Why, if everytime I opened a book I received a random bugger every now and then… I’d probably read even more than I already do. There. I said it.
I worked in a used book store for several years. You wouldn’t believe some of the weird things that people use as bookmarks. When we inspected books before putting them up for sale, we found all sorts of peculiar stuff. Business cards, receipts for all sorts of things, personal letters, bits of knitting and crochet work, legal papers (including a jury summons), torn-out portions of other books, hair barrettes, and on and on.
The best thing I ever found inside a used book: a $20 bill. The worst: a mummified, rancid piece of bacon. The even-worse worst: a dried-out but obviously used condom.
Since this thread isn’t about the artistic merits of a book, it’s in the wrong section of our library here at the SDMB. I’ll shelve it in MPSIMS for ya.
I once found someone’s baptism certificate. I couldn’t figure out what church they went through, but I was able to find a relative and return it because an invitation to a reception at their house was with the certificate.
Aaaaaand a slightly snarky hijack…
So…what did they find pressed between the pages at that library?
Death to a person who does that. I can’t stand the smell of perfumes…makes my head all stuffed up and dizzy. I would have had to skip reading that book, most likely.
I got a coffee at McDonald’s once, and as I was drinking it, kept noticing a very flowery smell. Finally figured out that the person who put the lid on it must have been wearing a lot of perfume, and it somehow leached onto the lid. Yuck.
Regarding weird bookmarks in library books. I once found an airplane ticket stub in a book, and it was actually someone I worked with. (Had her name on the stub, and it’s an unusual hyphenated name, so I knew it had to be her.) Weirded me out, and so now I am very careful NEVER to put anything in a library book that has my name on it!
Mostly I just find unidentifiable stains and/or smears.
I did find several fossilized boogers, on various pages once. It was back when they still stamped the checkout dates in the back of books. The previous customer was from 4 years earlier.
