#50!

     This week we are celebrating a milestone here at Bayswater - our 50th Find of the Week on the Used Book Floor blog/column!  That is right - as of now, we have discovered 50 books with items hidden in them and shared our discoveries with you along the way.  In honor of our 50th blog/column, we are discussing not just one find this week, but 46!

     Over the course of the past two years, you have heard about items such as tickets, letters, test scores, photos, fishing flies and so much more in our writings.   What we have not shared, however, is that our most common find is...drumroll...bookmarks. We have been squirreling away all of the bookmarks that we have discovered from independent bookstores and our grand total is now 46!  While we have enjoyed watching the size of our bookmark collection grow, it has been even more fun to mark of all of the places on the map where they came from.  Currently, the bookmarks hail from independent bookstores in the states of New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, North Carolina, New Jersey, Colorado, New York, Ohio, Maryland, Tennessee, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and California.  We even found one from a small bookshop in London!

     Unless this is the first blog/column of ours that you have read, you know that what looks like a simple find at first still always winds up telling a story of sorts.  Such is the case, we are sure,  with our found bookmarks across America (& London).  Some are new, some are old, some bookshops represented are still open and upon a brief internet search, we found that two are no longer in business.  Two are Christian bookshops, one is just for women's literature, and another is actually one half library and the other half bookstore.  We didn't know that such a place existed!  Regardless of their make-up, all of the bookmarks have journeyed here with a past of their own that is comprised of where they have been and who owned them previously.  If only we knew the story of each!

     Though we have reached a milestone, our collection will not end with 46 bookmarks, as we plan to continue to compile those that we find and mark them off on a map.  Eventually, we hope to collect bookmarks from independent bookstores in all 50 states and across the world!

     You can catch up with our previous finds of the week on the used book floor at bayswaterbooks.com and on facebook.  Better yet, stop by the store in Center Harbor and check out the used book floor for yourself!