I saved a million-lira note by pressing it in a book as we used to do with leaves, but now I don't remember which book so it is safe even from me. In my copy of Cien años de soledad (which I am sure I never got through) I found my written copy of a quote from some lit-crit treatment I found at the library:I'll shake down some of my books and see what falls out.
That would be just fine. I used to keep a collection of Things Found in Books, for which used book stores were also a good source. Ephemera like airplane ticket stubs told stories as evocative as those in the books.
Nor is it a problem for readers who hold with Roland Barthes that a text is not an apricot but an onion: not a fruit with a hidden kernel, but "a construction of layers (or levels or systems) whose body contains, finally, no heart, no kernel, no secret, no irreducable principle, nothing except the infinity of its own envelopes -- which envelop nothing other than the unity of its own surfaces."
-- One Hundred Years of Solitude: Modes of Reading by Regina JamesKafka's Blue Octavo Notebooks
Do see about posting an image of your bookshelves, would you please? Perhaps a friend passing through could take some snaps. It's a good practice for insurance purposes too. Unless you have something to hide ... I had no idea there was so much poetry in the house.