The thirty-something writer loves cookbooks, especially those from the '50s and '60s. Aside from the great photos, you can read a whole cultural history in that book. For shoppers like Sites, traveling to used bookstores and scouring the shelves is half the fun. And this element of the unexpected extends beyond the books themselves. Be they bookmarks, inscriptions or splatterings of spaghetti sauce, used books can hold clues about the people who have traveled their pages before you.
Used booksellers have different philosophies regarding found objects.
Victoria Reid, owner of Reston's Used Book Shop, simply places the items back where she found them, an added bonus for the unsuspecting reader. The poster was folded between the pages of a King James version of the Bible. I consider them to be part of the reading experience. Inscriptions can be similarly revealing. The spine had never been cracked.