I typically use a 3x5 index card. I usually have tons of them lying around–for shopping lists, quick notes, etc., and they make very good bookmarks. The best part is that I can use them to take notes if there’s a particularly good phrase in the book, or something.
I put the card all the way inside the book, without any edges sticking out. Because it’s card stock, it’s easy to find when I need to find my place.
I don’t use “official” bookmarks, but I use whatever is handy to mark a page, usually a post-it, or a receipt from the bookstore, or the due date slip. I never dogear a book. (Most of the time, I can’t even make myself highlight my textbooks, only if they’re used and already beat-up.) I used to pick up some of those paper strips from the paint department with all the colors on them, but I haven’t done that lately. If there’s nothing on hand, then I just flip through the book until I ge to where I left off.
I always use a bookmark.
I’m with this crowd. It’s my book, and I want it to look like somebody’s read it. I can read books over and over again without losing any enjoyment, and if I like something enough to read it until it falls apart, I just buy it again.
Paperbacks, I will gladly dog-ear pages. Harcovers, I usually use the dust jacket as a bookmark. I own many bookmarks and even occasionally use them, but it really just depends on where I am in relation to any of aforementioned bookmarks when I decide to stop reading.
I still make bookmarks all the time. I have hundreds of them, all carefully categorized, but I rarely use them. Nowadays, I just google for the page I need.
I used to dogear books back in the days before I discovered animism. Now I can hear the paper fibers screeeeeaming in pain. I don’t even open a book all that far 'cause if paper screams when folded, you don’t wanna know about a cracked spine.
I have a zillion bookmarks and don’t use any of them more than a few pages. None of them work-- too slippery, too big, too fancy, too much responsibility. No thanks! A receipt or shopping list is perfect, thanks. Plus, when you find them years later they’re fascinating.
I never realized the anti-dogear group was so vehement! While I never, ever do that to a library book or one that doesn’t belong to me, I have no problem with doing it to my own books. Usually it’s only turned down for less than 24 hours, and never the same place twice…I’ve done more damage to pages by falling asleep on the book! What I cannot do it highlight a book (even when I was in college) or make notes in the margin. Who has time while reading to stop, pick up a highlighter or a pencil and make comments? And who are they making the comments to?
My theory on the dogears is like the Velveteen Rabbit…books only become real when they are truly loved.
You dog-ear-ers are infidels! Infidels, I say!
I’m not sure why I’m so vehement. After all, as you say, if it’s your book, you have every right to mutilate it in any way you want. Nevertheless, it bugs the hell out of me to see anyone do that. It’s a reaction I can’t help, like hearing someone scrape their fingernails on a blackboard, only worse.
That having been said, I’ll use any ol’ scrap of paper as a bookmark. By far, the vast majority of bookmarks I use are subscription cards from magazines, because every magazine published nowadays has at least four of the things, so they’re always at hand.
You know, almost every teacher I had in school, from elementary school all the way through to graduation, has drilled it into our heads that we should never, ever dog-ear books! It was just wrong, wrong, wrong!
I always was a rebel. 
FOLDING PAGES??? :eek: Never. I cringe at the thought of metal or cross-stitched ones too; even the mere thickness of a cardstock one looks like enough to gradually wedge the pages of my books apart and contribute to those parallel spinal cracks, which is worth avoiding lest the pages start falling out. (I read mostly paperbacks with a glue spine, not a cloth one). So, I use the thinnest paper available to me: receipt paper, mostly. There’s never a shortage of it, and it slips inbetween pages with minimal spine stretchage.
A well-loved book is a well-treated book. 
When I was 14, I got 100 pesetas every week from my parents, as pocket money. That’s a 100 peseta note. It was a huge increase from the previous year (until then, it had been 5 pesetas per year in my age, so in theory it should have been 10 pesetas), so I never could figure out how come I was always broke, I’d never had so much trouble keeping my finances in check (yeah, I was 12, so?)
Next year I re-read all my books. :smack: Oh, so THIS is where my money had been going!
No, I never dog-ear pages in a book. Certainly not a library book, and especially not one of my own. They’re loved enough, they don’t need to look beaten-up as well. Books have always been precious to me.
As for bookmarks – yes. There are tons here at home, but almost always I end up using even clean tissues folded in four as a page marker. I’m such a disorganised person.
Still got a cool one a friend sent me from America, though. That’s holding the fort in a Tom Holt book at present.
70 pesetas. Should have been 70 pesetas, not 10. If I pay extra, will I be able to edit my own posts?
70 pesetas. Should have been 70 pesetas, not 10. If I pay extra, will I be able to edit my own posts?
I love to read but I can’t stand bookmarks. They are so annoying. None of them seem to fit my needs. Usually a nice long receipt works pretty well since it’s thin, visible and fairly resistent to damage. Or sometimes I use one of those paint chips that you use to pick out your wall color. They’re so pretty, I can’t help trying to find a use for them. Sometimes I try to match the color of the paint to the mood of the book.
I like bookmarks, but… DOGEARING? **SATAN. **
I have paperback novels from 10-15 years ago that are still practically mint. The only ones that have fallen apart are the ones that used really, really cheap glue.
To find my place, I just… mind-meld with the book – I just riffle the pages until the split looks right, then riffle back and bang, my place. I used to remember the page number, but not so much these days.
I love books, but I cannot understand the physical attachment to them (unless they are som e sort of first edition, collectible, coffeetable, etc.) I will dog-ear, leave open and flat to the page, bookmark (with a paperclip sometimes!!!) Of course I only do trhis to books I own.
Dogearing books shivers No way do I do that!
As for bookmarks, I have a favourite one that usually ends up in whatever hardcover I’m reading (it’s a metal spiral and the only decoration is a scopio symbol at the top. Picked it up somewhere for a couple of bucks). Most often whatever is handy ends up in the book, napkins (clean ones!), receipts, note cards, post its…
I do have quite a few bookmarks and one glance at my bookshelf tells me where they got to.
One of my books has several bookmarks in it, it’s a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul (the first book) which belonged to my Grandfather and though I moved the bookmarks to my favourite stories they are the ones he had left in it before he died.
And man does my spelling suck today.
I love bookmarks! They are one of my favorite small gifts, both to give and recieve. The more unusual, the better.
That being said… I don’t always have one handy. A lot of times, I just use a folded tissue, subsscription care or some such.
Dogearing?? :eek: NEVER!!!