SOME book lovers will have a favourite bookmark they use time after time. Some will simply fold back a page to mark their place. For others though, anything will do – as one York shop has discovered.

Readers have used everything from concert tickets to postcards to love letters to family photographs, and they are now being used in a striking new way.

John McKay, manager of the Oxfam bookshop in Low Petergate, has spent two months collecting material left in donated books, to do something pretty remarkable with it.

And now, if you stroll past, you will see a window display designed by volunteers, made up of old curios and oddities found inside the stock and celebrating a love of reading across the centuries.

“We wanted to do something different for what we found in the books given to the shop,” John told The Press.

“It is quite remarkable really, we never know quite what we are going to find.”

Who would expect to find an old Christmas card, or a set of postcards decorated with a different poetic rhyme, each carefully looked after and protected in a paper packet?

The display is a delightful and personal insight in to the heart of the readers and the journey of the books, allowing readers’ journeys to be shared.

One wonders what the person who used the handwritten note as a bookmark now hanging in the shop window had thought when they read the letter addressed to them as “white rabbit.” They probably never imagined that it would be enjoyed by hundreds of visitors.

John said: “It’s a pleasant part of the job finding different things. I used to leave them in the books but since we started finding more and more we decided to make a display and make the most of them.

“There’s something about it. It makes the book seem a lot more personal.”

From old Christmas cards and postcards to modern day moving book marks, the display allows passers-by and shoppers to go on a historic journey which shows the inner thoughts of the reader, and how society has changed over the decades.

A “dress funky soul night” poster hanging next to a 3D bookmark shows how diverse the items have been.

Book lovers can own a piece of this history, buying the items and donating to help tackle poverty in the developing world.

“We view what we do here as a means of recycling, making the most of them through giving them to someone else,” says John.

“The main aim is to make as much money for Oxfam as we can.”