Have you ever bought a used book and found something interesting inside? I don’t mean the inscription inside the front cover (another post for another time) … I mean the ephemera. (Merriam Webster: “Paper items [such as posters, broadsides, or tickets] that were originally meant to be discarded after use but have since become collectibles.”) Don’t get too excited—the most interesting thing I’ve ever discovered in a used book was a grocery list. Oh, and that business card from the Buffet Palace (“Oriental Buffet & Water Floating Sushi Bar”) in Austin, Texas.

But the other day I opened a book—The Spire by William Golding—purchased in December 2000 in the gift shop of the Salisbury Cathedral in England, and out fell a postcard. I didn’t remember it until I turned it over: my British girlfriend had written a note and tucked it inside when she presented me with the book later in the day. Ah yes, I remember it well.

And it got me to thinking that my bookshelves are full of little bits and pieces of my personal history. I started pulling books off the shelf at random to have a look. Aside from the obvious (printed promotional bookmarks from the store where it was purchased or, alternately, receipts for purchase of the book), I mostly found old medical receipts, because when I go to the doctor’s office I always take a book. When I leave, the receipt gets stuck inside the cover—I like to keep loose items together—and sometimes never removed.

Here are some other things I found:

• old used Day-Timer pages
• a schedule of classes from my freshman year of college
• a receipt from Carter’s Card Shop (I worked there in high school) dated 22 September 1971
• a handwritten note dated 8/16/91 from a close friend of mine, thanking me for sharing the book (A Cure for Dreams by Kaye Gibbons) with her
• in my high school–era copy of The Canterbury Tales, a classroom handout titled “Medieval Misogyny”
• an unused gift enclosure (a little card) that is permanently stuck to its envelope
• a stalk of orange flowers I picked in Ireland, carefully pressed
• several book reviews, ripped from Newsweek or Time or Entertainment Weekly, tucked inside the books to which they referred
• a list of words and page numbers on which they’re found (I got a blog post out of this one)
• the pink copy of the Boy’s Application for Tennessee Driver License dated 12-10-99

This last one most truly epitomizes the joy of this sort of personal archeology. It was his sixteenth birthday; I left work early to get home in time to get him to the TDOT office before it closed. He passed. And then he drove us home, where he was surprised to find our living room full of his friends, waiting to celebrate with him. Finding that pink sheet of paper sixteen years later gave me quite a smile.

The things we choose to save—even unintentionally—become artifacts, clues to a life lived—lived well? happily? unhappily? When I talked about this phenomenon on Facebook, my friend Michelle Ule told me about research she was doing on Oswald Chambers at Wheaton College: “When I went through [his] Bible and other books, I found book marks and so on. It was thrilling to think that, like me, they included special mementos in their books.” In fact, many of my book-loving friends had stories about finding things tucked in books. Ephemera by definition, maybe, but not by what the heart feels.

This is such a universal urge—life represented by stuff, ephemera—that even novels have been written about it. The art novel Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry (by artist Leanne Shapton) was a fascinating look at that idea, tracing the trajectory of a relationship from first meeting to breakup by looking at their possessions, acquired separately and together. (Here’s an article about it.) In So Many Ways to Begin, author Jon McGregor’s protagonist, a curator in a small museum, tells the story as a series of entries inspired by a memento or relic from his life. Artist (and storyteller) Nick Bantock’s The Museum at Purgatory, which purports to be exactly what it sounds like, is a fantastical work. And then there’s Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist (and Nobel Prize winner) who created an entire museum that represents his novel The Museum of Innocence.

Again, connecting physical objects to a book. In Burning the Page: The eBook Revolution and the Future of Reading, Jason Merkowski muses that “ebooks are useless” for keeping our personal archeology together. We “lose the feeling of unexpected discovery. Why, for example, was a certain love letter placed inside a specific book?” My feelings exactly.

We sentimental humans manage to amass a lot of stuff. I have scrapbooks, photo albums, high school yearbooks (my own, my mothers, the Boy’s), and, of course, all those books, books, books. Books that no one really cares about but me. What will happen to them when I’m gone? And those scrapbooks? Sometimes I wonder if I should take them all apart and scatter them among the pages of my books. And so live on. 🙂

Tweet: Personal archeology: ephemera by definition, maybe, but not by what the heart feels.
Tweet: Have you ever bought a used book and found something interesting inside?
Tweet: Ah, yes, I remember it—that moment, that day, that person—well.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”