Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items From Around the World by Davy Rothbart, Simon & Schuster, 252 pages, $21

The thrill of passing notes in Grade 6 math class came with a cost. If you were caught in the act of elementary espionage, teacher would punish you by reading the illicit missive aloud, in an attempt to embarrass the scribblers into silence.

Davy Rothbart has discovered a way of upping the mortification factor -- he publishes wayward mashnotes, shopping lists, even algebra tests in his magazine, Found, sharing their contents with thousands of people across North America.

Rothbart, 28, began the magazine three years ago, and has since toured Canada and America, hosting Found parties where he reads his favourite discoveries aloud, just like your Grade 6 math teacher.

Rothbart, however, is better suited to this task, since most schoolmarms would wince at the creative grammar ("It would be nice if you would park correct") and weep at the lousy penmanship displayed in Found. Never mind the salty language that appears on almost every page.

The aim of Found is not to document the failure of the public school system, but merely to share these small bits of paper, these scraps of humanity, with like-minded voyeurs. And it turns out we like to watch. Found is popular. Very much so.

Rothbart has taken a simple but brilliant idea and turned it into a mini-empire of alternative culture. Oscar Wilde said "we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." By keeping his eyes in the gutter ("groundgazing") and cherrypicking the best scribblings, Rothbart has become a star. Found magazine has been praised in everything from GQ to the Washington Post, and was even the subject of a Talk of the Town squib in The New Yorker. On April 27, Rothbart appeared on David Letterman.

And now, only three issues old, Found magazine has been repackaged into a book. It would be easy to deem Rothbart a sellout, except he has nothing to sell out. The recycled literature he publishes is neither slick nor contrived: "Grandpa smell like poopy. Love Matthew." Indeed, the rough cut-and-paste layout he favours has created the ugliest coffee table book you'll ever enjoy reading. Besides, it's pretty hard to hate a dude named Davy, and his unconditional love for found material insulates him from criticisms.

Regardless of your rubbernecking tendencies, this is difficult book to put down, as the reader is propelled by curiosity to keep flipping to the end. Thrust uninvited into the middle of a situation, the reader tries to figure out what prompted the writing of a note like "PLEASE DO NOT PUT CRAB ON MY CAR. JUST CUT IT OUT!!!" Loosely organized by theme, including Valentines, a two-page spread on lost keys and To-Do Lists, many notes offer a compact, primitive poetry: "The most intensed sun in the biggest desert does not compare with the light of your look."

While publishing these notes is in many ways cruel (although identifying details are altered to preserve anonymity), Found doesn't frame these folded, crinkled treasures in a snarky, fortified with irony fashion. Rothbart, rather than being a snickering wise-ass or a cooler-than-thou hipster, admits to finding many of these notes touching.

David Hewett, a Found contributor, echoes this sentiment. "You can learn so much from just the smallest fragments of people's lives. Someone's essence emerges from these tiny details ... yeah, it's fun and it's amusing, but it's also really poignant."

The avalanche of reality shows on television and the resurgence of documentary films might offer proof we crave authenticity. A cultural commentator could successfully argue that these misplaced memos offer a raw, unfiltered, unguarded peek into the collective psyche, an antidote to prefab pop stars and varnished Hollywood celebs.

Or it could just be that reading a note that says "I wish I won't flunk sixth grade!" provides a deep pleasure that requires no further analysis.