We don’t shop for new books very often but when we do my son is enthralled by the display of bookmarks. By now he’s learned that I’m not going to buy him one, but when he was little he’d study the display longingly. He’d always become smitten with one with a hologram or an LED and they were $10 or more. Even when my ship comes in I don’t think I’ll ever consider $10 an impulse item.
I get catalogs, such as Levenger, that offer all sorts of fancy ones and I wonder who is buying them. Whenever I forget myself and start to think “that’s a lovely thing, and I read enough that I’d use it constantly. I should treat myself to a beautiful book mark.” I snap out of it with an image of me letting go of a book at the mouth of the library book drop with my beautiful bookmark still in it. Or dropping the book and bending the metal filigree.
Some of the commercially made bookmarks seem to me as if they’d damage books. There are metal hooks that look like they’d nestle into the spin and strain it. Don’t the ones that are made on the paperclip model ding the pages?
Lately I’ve been reserving library books online. When I pick them up they have slips in them with my name – personalized bookmarks!
So Dopers, do you sit in your paneled studies and use monogrammed brass bookmarks? Pheasant feathers? Paper clips? How do you hold your place in your books?
Those return mail cards from magazine inserts or junk mail work well. Or a bit of paper ripped off a note. Or a square of toilet paper (if I’m reading in the bathroom, especially!) or Kleenex.
What don’t I use? Bookmarks. At the rate I lose the bits and pieces I do use, I could spend $100 a year on bookmarks!
Actually, I mostly dogear the pages, unless it’s an antique or someone else’s book. Did I just give the Doper bibliophiles the vapors?
Currently, I read on an iPad, so it keeps my books open to the right page/has a “ribbon” that you can mark a page with, as well as letting you keep notes on certain pages (which are then indexed, so you can quickly access them). However, when I used to read physical books more frequently, as I still do fro, time to time, I use whatever sliver of paper I can find. Usually an old reciept, sometimes an envelope, or anything flattish really. Far as I know, I’ve never used or owned a “bookmark” that was designed for that purpose.
But, 10 bucks for a nice looking one doesn’t seem unreasonable, or out of the real of impulse purchase. I set aside a few bucks a week for spur of the moment decisions, whether they’re doodads, gizmos, widgets or flimflams, and I have a hard time finding anything that doesn’t cps 10+ USD today.
However the best book marks are those spools of ribbon you can buy for a dollar or so at junk shops, that are intended for wrapping gifts. Super thin, cut whatever length you want, choose your own color/pattern and who cares if you lose it, there is plenty more. It seems that people actually think they are cool, when you use the lacy ones.
I use scrap paper from things like junk mail. But, if I ever won the lottery 'd have a girl whose job would be to keep my place in books I was reading. Actually there would be a team of employees, as I would want to have someone available 24/7.
Most of my books come from the local library, which still uses stamped cards to record the due date for the book. I usually use those cards. I also have something called a book bungee that I use when I’m reading away from home, in the car, on the beach, etc. It keeps the book closed while marking my place.
I’ve actually been getting better at using “real” bookmarks, in the sense of free bookmarks given out by bookstores or other places. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology sends me a pretty bookmark with a bird on it about once a month, with a letter asking for donations. So: hint to readers, want a free bookmark? Buy something from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, you’ll get bookmarks for life.
I do have a few more expensive bookmarks that people have given me, and like the OP, I’m a little afraid to use them. So they tend to sit in a drawer somewhere.
I also use scraps of paper, junk mail, and kleenex at times.
Not a bookmark, but I get a million charities sending me address stickers all the time. I stick those on all of our books in case we lend one out or lose one.
I was once asked to look something up in a book from the 1910s in my workplace (a library) and when I opened it I found a butterfly (that probably had been there since the book was new as it is not a lending library), which I carefully put back when I was ready.
I have been known to pull out a strand of my hair and use that as bookmark when I’m really, really stuck.
But usually it’s random detritus from the bottom of my purse or satchel. Gum wrappers, torn papers, receipts. I’ve used a smaller book to mark my place in a bigger book. Right now on my desk I have my headphone cords marking my spot. I think I will describe myself as “resourceful.”
