Putting a book down

Dude whatever happened to laying it face down still open? On top of the handy pile of other face-down still-open books, where it will sit v comfortably?

Memorise the page number lol.

To this day as a grown person I still dog-ear the corner I am TERRIBLE

Used to remember the page number, or just roughly where I was and leaf through until it doesn't look familiar, but now books tend to get left for longer between readings than they used to and my memory isn't great, so I'm slowly realising the joy of bookmarks.

Also I tend to hoard things like postcards (and tbh just have piles of un-dealt-with post everywhere) and before this was just an untidy/wasteful bad habit, but now I can shove them in a book they have a purpose, hurrah

those large tfl cards advertising exhibitions or whetever you used to get at stations when boris were mayor are excellent bookmarks. I pilfered dozens.

I use as bookmarks the extra "tickets" that come with cinema or theatre bookings with just name and address printed on - good size and thickness with the additional benefit that if I ever lose a book when I'm out and about that whoever found it would be able to track me down in order to return it lol

Dude whatever happened to laying it face down still open?

^^^ This. It's a terrible habit but I do it regularly.

Also feel like "bookmark with an actual bookmark" and "bookmark with a ticket/bit of paper lying around" should be separate options.

To this day as a grown person I still dog-ear the corner I am TERRIBLE

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Thursday, September 8, 2016 5:37 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My son dogears his books and I have given him a lot of shit for it. Maybe I'll cut it out though if it still works for ol' Tracer Hand.

I personally use scraps of paper these days, but feel like having actual bookmarks would be a step up.

I was formerly a diehard Kindle/nook guy, but after many years I've recently gone back to book books and am much happier.

From a bookmark perspective, did you ever find that your nook bookmark would just disappear and you'd reopen your book to find it back at the table of contents? It's similar to real books in that way, but much harder to find your place again. If a bookmark falls out of your irl book, you usually have an idea of where you were in the book by it's thickness and you stumble around flipping back and forth until you hit on the right page fairly quickly. If you weren't paying attention to what page or chapter you were on with your nook, it can take a while to pinpoint where you were.

I use bookmarks when I think to but I honestly kinda just refind my place most times. I guess I didn't realize that that was particularly odd.

always a train ticket

I personally use scraps of paper these days, but feel like having actual bookmarks would be a step up.

I have some actual bookmarks (mostly received as stocking-fillery gifts) but they're never right there when I put a book down, so a piece of paper randomly selected from the snowdrifts on any surface in my flat will generally do

but I also have some museum postcards which I never got round to sending or just bought because I liked them so it's nice to upgrade them slightly above "clutter"

receipts

Usually pick up bookmarks when I buy books from certain places and pick up a couple in the library.
Otherwise find that the oval cut out part of a lid on a tissue box is a really good bookmark especially when I'm reading in bed.
Tickets too, though I don't use the card type when in London any more but found taht size really good.
& yeah receipts are handy

& when I get stuck without one I tend to semi remember where i was and go and find the place. Read through a couple of paragraphs and see fi I'm in the right place.

Bookmark. Nothing nice, any scrap of paper out of the junk mail will do.

I've never done any of the above, I just shut the book and assume I'll remember where I am when I reopen it. The stress point on spine usually shows the right spot. For hardbacks I'll always use the book jacket flap.

I've been mixing and matching Kindle and paper books lately - I tend to daydream less and read a lot faster on the Kindle, so it's preferable for long books. Right now I'm reading Count of Monte Cristo, which is amazing but would be way too heavy to carry.

Some WashPosty snobknob - I forget whether it was Yardley or Dirda - once said that bookmarks were a mark of insufficiently intent reading and/or laziness. Like, if you're reading carefully enough, you remember where you were. I think that's extreme.

I use bits of paper usually, but I do think there is a slight ring of truth to the notion that you can learn to remember where you were. People may just apply this in different ways. Me, if I'm remembering a sentence I've read, I usually know whether it was a right-or left-hand page, and how far down the page.

I also think one can apply different standards to library books, borrowed books, and books you know you will want to keep around. A book I suspect will never get read again may get less respect from me than one I want to keep and treasure.

Hardcover book jackets rarely stay on in my world. Sometimes I set them aside and undertake to put them back on when I'm done reading; others I toss immediately. I hate the loose floppy jacket.

Other options: break the spine of the book at the place where you stopped reading and it will fall open to that page when you pick it back up -- or just tear out each leaf once you finish reading it, so you are always on the first physical page or its reverse. Easy!

None of the above...? I just open them up and find where I stopped reading, no bookmarks or memorized page numbers or whatever.

The love for leaving them open face down is pitiful. Without moving my chair I can reach three books in this state: Fowler's Modern Usage, Tom Wolfe's New Journalism anthology, and Dancing Ledge by Derek Jarman. I'm not reading any of them front-to-back, I'm working from all of them (for different projects). I also use these a lot for research purpose (colour-coded in ways i generally immediately forget) :

http://mkateb.com/media/catalog/product/cache/2/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/1/0/10659039.jpg

What's the objection to an open face-down book?

If I've paid for a hardcover, I'll use a bookmark. Paperbacks get dog-eared. (I love those Library of America hardcovers that come with a built-in bookmark ribbon, btw.)

I like to close the book then try and remember where I got to next time.

I don't have an objection to it -- it's what I mainly do! I meant it's pitiful how few of you use this method. It was a sort of veiled half-joke about all those "where is the love" threads I srarted on ILM a trillion years ago, two of which just got revived (one by me). Where is the love!? There is none -- how pitiful! etc

Objection to open-faced books? It's theoretically bad for the spine.

But most modern books that we read and use are not precious collectors' treasures, they're containers of words, for which we spent $12.95 at Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

If my copy of an Iris Murdoch book (or whatever) gets a bit beat-up from two or three hard readings, I can just buy another one, get it from the library next time, or (more likely) live without it. It's not like we're living some On the Beach-style existence where human knowledge will die out if we don't treat trade paperbacks with the greatest of care.

If I were the sort of person who owned rare mint-condition first editions, I'm not sure I'd read them casually at a beachfront pub while eating greasy fries. I'd get a cheapo reading version and let the delicate flower-type book stay home and appreciate in value.

It's not like we're living some On the Beach-style existence where human knowledge will die out if we don't treat trade paperbacks with the greatest of care.

sometimes I think that this is not that far off tbh and get paranoid about preserving my library for posterity

in the future, humanity will be saved by my copies of Robert Silverberg paperbacks

Dog earer here, books aren't sacred. People who crack the spines though, disgusting savages.

ersatz bookmark always. im not super precious with my books - they're just objects, i don't really want or need to keep them in good condition or to have them around, unless they're particularly "nice" looking or i will re-read them, which in general they aren't and i won't - but i wouldn't turn the corner of a page

You find where you were when you pick the book up again

When Martin Skidmore died and we had in very short order to break up the library he had spent a life putting together -- because his flat needed to be sold -- I wrote a big sad post about this exact problem. Martin's comics collection went to a good home (or several) as did a few of his books -- his records and videos were mostly scattered to local charity shops. What happens to the (sometimes excellent) private archives of people who don't become so publicly beloved (or rich) that maintaining happens of its own accord?

I always remember seeing a poster in a library when I was a pre-teen showing how not to treat books. They included leaving the book face down at the correct page among some other stuff I think including keeping it submerged in a fish tank. It has been like 35 years plus since i saw the thing though.

Ha Ha : I dropped my book in the bath and it went fat

i usually find my place again but sometimes i stick a ticket/receipt/voting slip/demand for student loan payment in it.

bookmark > memorize > dog-ear

though imo one should always pick up a page or two before where you last left off

Anyone ever used a slim book as bookmark in a fat book? Something unnatural and cannibalistic about that.

http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/601505/23601990/1380482689347/Bkmarks-Kindle.jpg?token=kqWs8c8uLSQTLeXzE9QETsvtmpI%3D

But most modern books that we read and use are not precious collectors' treasures, they're containers of words, for which we spent $12.95 at Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

Yeah, as a kid I loved to think of some of my favourite books being found centuries from now but most modern books aren't going to live past 100 or so, as I realised when I took a walk through a chronologically arranged newspaper archive: the early 1800s volumes (linen fibre) look just fine but once you hit the late 1800s and the introduction of wood pulp everything suddenly starts looking too moth-eaten to open.

I still hate to see a book get damaged but at least this helped me loosen up a little in the interests of feeling less bad whenever a cover gets bent back in my rucksack during my commute, etc.

(NB I am not an expert so maybe modern pulp isn't as bad but p sure a mass-market paperback is still not going to get to a Book of Kells type age)

None of the above...? I just open them up and find where I stopped reading, no bookmarks or memorized page numbers or whatever.

^^^this

When I was in college I annotated! I wrote in margins.

On some deeply foolish level I may even have fantasized that my marginalia might be useful to future biographers or scholars of my work.

I still have some of those books, and sometimes read them. The notes I made are so embarrassingly sophomoric - literally sophomoric - that I want to destroy them with fire. Along with my past self and, heck, the university and town in which I did that.

Even the relatively unobtrusive pencil lines I put next to significant passages? They are next to the wrong passages. The really good stuff went over my head.

A+ to mark s btw

I sort of love reading other people's marginalia tho. When I get a used book and someone's gone through and notated stuff it always gets me thinking about who else read this book and why and what they got out of it.

Nothing worse than loaning someone a book and getting it back with notes in it. Makes me want to burn their house down.

pretty much always dog-ear. i finally read Infinite Jest this year and i had to use 2 bookmarks

People that just open the book up and try to find where they were: do you not mind reading bits that you haven't gotten to yet when you're trying to find your place? I always seem to read spoilers or something confusing when I do this.

i would provide an answer to this thread but i can't put this book down, i mean i just CANNOT put this book down!

do you not mind reading bits that you haven't gotten to yet when you're trying to find your place

I guess I make a mental note of the general point that I'm at in the book, sometimes I'll remember a chapter or a specific paragraph and then I just go looking for that. I suppose occasionally I'll inadvertently read a "spoiler" or something but I am not the type of reader that cares about that. Books that can be "spoiled" in that manner are not books worth reading imo.

The notes I made are so embarrassingly sophomoric - literally sophomoric - that I want to destroy them with fire. Along with my past self and, heck, the university and town in which I did that.

ears burning over here

i just stick a scrap of paper in my place -- usually a movie ticket stub or a receipt or something. used to just pick up the book and try to find my place but this gets tougher if you're reading a long-ish history book or something. i can find my place again in a novel much more easily.

I'm a spine cracker.

Getting a bit annoyed that my cheapo Kindle knock-off regularly resets my page and starts me at the beginning. It also loses my bookmarks quite regularly. Imagine reading Finnegans Wake on that thing.

usually train tickets, cinema tickets etc, i do have some actual bookmarks but they're rarely ready to hand. flappy bit if reading hardbacks or other books with flappy bits. i'm not against leaving stuff lying open but i just don't really have space to be occupied by open books.

the true connoisseurs choice is using two open books as bookmarks for each other.

if it has a dustjacket, i will use that.

if it is an art book, I will use an ersatz bookmark, generally an envelope from a parking ticket or utility bill

if it's just a paperback novel, I dog ear.

The notes I made are so embarrassingly sophomoric - literally sophomoric - that I want to destroy them with fire. Along with my past self and, heck, the university and town in which I did that.
ears burning over here

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Thursday, September 8, 2016 12:22 PM (three hours ago)

dear Roland Barthes' Mythologies, I deeply apologize to what my 18 year old self wrote in your margins.

we photocopied a whole lot of money at work when we got our fancy new colour printer, trying to see if we could make a convincing counterfeit note, so now I have all this fake one-sided money I use as bookmarks

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i voted bookmark but until like a year ago i was a dog-ear-er

if i used bookmarks for every book i haven't finished reading i would look like a fucking nutjob, there'd have to be a special cupboard in my apartment where i kept spare bookmarks

I have a steady stream of <a href="http://clui.org";>CLUI</a> exhibit postcards that inevitably become bookmarks.

(goddamn brain lapse)

I use as bookmarks the extra "tickets" that come with cinema or theatre bookings

AYO

I also use New Yorker subscription cards that fall out of the magazine.

I do own local bookstore bookmarks.

Current read that I started yesterday, the best I could do was an unopened band-aid from the mini first aid kit I keep in my backpack.

just tear out the pages you've read and bin them. that way you just need to open the book at the first page and you're golden. but if you can't bring yourself to toss the old pages out, why not just save them all in a pile and it as handy bookmark?

^use

Why not eat the pages you have read, and use the fibrous turds you produce as a result as a bookmark?

^practical only if the resulting turds were spread between two intact pages

^the generation of subsequent bookmarks for the same book may become less appealing.

If you write in a book that does not 100% belong to you then you need to be hanged.

Ersatz bookmarks all the way. That generally sit about halfway through and never get any further on.

If you write in a book that does not 100% belong to you then you need to be hanged.

sense a story here

Yeah but it's minor. Lent a book to someone, they wrote in it. 'In pencil, so you can rub it out'. Except you can't ever fully erase it cos you indented the page. Fuckhead.

"i spilled a bowl of cheerios on your floor but it's cool you can just clean it up"

i know cheerios don't leave indentations but c'mon man indentations smh

What if I just write Metallica?

last night i used a candy bar wrapper (double decker.)
this morning i replaced it with a scrap of paper that has my monthly budget on it.

i'm reading 'ancillary justice' and am actually using two (2) bookmarks for some reason.

needed a new bookmark so i ripped off a piece of a zzzquil package last night

to answer the question in more detail --
i read a lot of mass market paperbacks, and unless they are old and crumbling i usually flip a corner.
if i'm reading a "nice book" i will try to use a bookmark. if no bookmark i'll try to remember where i was. it's rarely hard to find my place again.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

comp tickets to 1995-6 shows at first avenue in mpls that i did not attend as bookmarks

There is a great quote from Nabokov in Pnin about somebody writing in a library book.

i'm reading 'ancillary justice' and am actually using two (2) bookmarks for some reason.

Turning a Kindle off

5 rainmen up in here