[Sadly Midnight Oil Books is no longer trading. We can recommend the excellent G.T. Coventry's, High Street, Kirkcaldy in our absence. This blog will continue to be maintained however as I remain more or less in the profession.]
On a daily basis, the staff at Midnight Oil Books, an Antiquarian and Secondhand Bookshop based in Kirkcaldy, Fife, spruce up, catalogue, price and shelf boxes and boxes of old books, and on occasion, the ephemera - the sweetie wrappers, notes to diary, receipts and so on - contained within is of as much interest as the books themselves.
The fascination lies perhaps in some element of intrigue, or in the obscurity of a reference, or randomness of a thought.
Instead of binning these quirks and curios, we pulish them here and invite you to join us in solving the puzzles they present.