Before ever hearing of Benford's law I've noticed that many books are more worn at the beginning than further on.

I simply chalked it up to most people not being very serious about reading books in general and any given book in particular. It's a rare person who makes it all the way through.

I don't think my own observation was a particularly interesting or original one.

What made Newcomb's observation interesting was that it was about books of logarithm tables in particular, where (unlike a typical book) you'd think the lookups would be uniformly distributed.

The other interesting thing that did require an unusual amount of curiosity and dedication is the systematic testing of such a casual observation to try to figure out what the underlying reasons for it were and how they might apply to things other than books of logarithms. This desire and dedication to observe, test, and figure out the underlying workings of things is the hallmark of many a great scientist.