Serendipity in a used book

Anyone who’s spent much time browsing through used bookstores or libraries knows that you never know what you’re going to find tucked inside an old book or jotted in the margins.

We asked listeners: What are some of the most memorable or inexplicable things you’ve found a used book? We got lots of great responses, including one from Jeff Stacey in Washington, DC.

“We were in Yellow House Books, and we were just rummaging around looking through the shelves,” Stacey recalls, “and I discovered a book that really jumped out to me…”

And it turned out that the book had this inscription:

5 May 1994
For Saul Bellow,
In gratitude for all his books.
Respectfully,
David Remnick