Within the books of our home library...

...it's not unusual to find bits of ephemera I've slipped between the pages over the years...for safekeeping.

Little things that double as bookmarks:
Notes & doodles written/drawn by DollinkDaughters when they were kids. Chinese Good Luck red envelopes (sans money, but kept for how pretty they are). A receipt from purchase of the book. Airplane seat ticket stubs. Recipes. Unused cocktail napkins. Candy wrappers. Grocery lists.

If the book happens to be a Russian novel, one might find a listing of the names of the characters = full names + nicknames (those of you who have read Russian novels understand that it's near impossible to keep track of those lengthy names without writing them down).

It's especially amusing for me to discover slips of paper on which I've written notes to myself.

I came across one just the other day. Flipping through an old book which was about to go into a donation box for Goodwill, I found a slip of folded scrap paper on which I'd jotted three very important things to remember. The note contains the following info that is definitely worth saving (perhaps in the pages of another book):

(1) Klatuu/ Barada/ Nikto
- because I always forget...and it's of the utmost importance to remember....just in case... an alien robotic form needs to be stopped.... from zapping me with its eye-laser-beam.

(2) The words from a scene of one of my favourite Danny Kaye films:
The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle.. The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true. *** The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon. The vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true.

Just in case one ever has to choose between the vessel and the flagon.

(3) The lines to W. H. Auden's 'Funeral Blues' - as memorably recited in the movie 'Four Weddings and a Funeral'.

So sweetly poignant.