Answers for the clue that begins, “I’ve met some Strange people…”

The six symbols over the hourglass on the red book stand for six words, based on the key provided in the clue:

MIKE
OSCAR
JULIET
ALPHA
VICTOR
ECHO

These are the phonetic words the US military uses when they want to spell something out of comms. Each word stands for the first letter of the word. When you take the first letter of each word, based on the order of symbols on the book, it spells:

MOJAVE