One of the exciting surprises of used books are the treasures in them.
Not words, but artifacts.
Lost bookmarks. Photos between pages. Receipts. Stickers.
Then there's notations. Highlights. Scribblings.
In a less direct way, I also love dog-eared pages. Not a conservative way to save a page, but a double dog-eared page is cause for investigation. Why that page? What's on it? Who chose to mark it twice?
When you don't know who last read this book, what do these pieces of ephemera have to offer? Who might this person be? What do their leavings say about them? At this time? In whatever place they read these same pages?
For this reason I miss the old library logs in the front of books. No names, no penmanship, no dates, now. Just chips and code swatches.
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