Bookmarks

I have a feeling I've seen this thread before. But no matter. I used to use boarding cards mostly, but nowadays I either use bookmarks from my shop, or no bookmark at all. I can usually find the page after a minute or so, and it can be a helpful recap.

Bookshop freebies usually.
I have a metal one that goes over the top of the page, like a paperclip, but its a little awkward.
Classy = books with their own attached bookmark ribbons
Superclassy = the hardback collections of Alan Moore's ABC comics, with their own attached bookmark ribbons

Generally anything at hand, but the local library always puts a strip of paper in a book, stamped with the due return date. This place seems to be overflowing with them, so those are generally my bookmarks.
Also, I have a sweet red leather bookmark that I found in a book I bought used, so I use that a lot. Makes me feel deliciously decadent, even if it does say "Norges litteraturhistorie".

Oh, and aside from those, I sometimes use dustjackets as bookmarks. Even the flaps, or just take off the whole jacket and put it between the covers. I suspect some who are fonder of books as objects than I would frown at that practise. And on that note, while I never dogear pages, mainly because it doesn't seem useful, I do sometimes leave books open, facing down to hold my spot. I like soft spines anyways.

If I'm reading a book that isn't mine, and I want to make notes, I'll use the paper I write notes on as a bookmark.
I did recently use a book as a bookmark though, which made me feel very postmodern.

I'd like to add an extra question, if you don't mind: What's the strangest thing you have used as a bookmark?
I once used a cat. Only for a few minutes while popping out to get something, but given the feline nature, I suspect I could just as well have left them like that for half a day.

No bookmarks, I just can't get the hang of them. I like the idea of putting the cat on my page though.

I am a very bad person and usually just flip my book upside down (open to my page) when I'm not reading it. I don't know why. I like bookmarks.

Superclassy = the hardback collections of Alan Moore's ABC comics, with their own attached bookmark ribbons

OTM, I read League the other night and it reminded me how convenient and elegant bookmarks can be.

Oh, I've also used a cat's tail, but somehow my page had been lost when I returned from the bathroom.

Leaving books open isn't practical when you're bringing a book with you in a bag. Haven't tried cats.

One of my great pleasures is opening a book I've read and seeing what I used for a bookmark. When I was a teen in outer Queens I would use bus transfers often, which had the date printed on them, which makes them extra nice. I think one of my books has a tranfer from my [18th?] birthday in it. (The bookmarks generally stay in the books.)

I used a $50 savings bond for a bookmark when I tried to read Light in August, which I never finished. (I was given the bond while I was reading the book.) I completely forgot about the bond until many years later when I was debating whether to reread it, by which time it had matured nicely! (The bond, not the book.)

once i found forty dollars in one of my copies of 'leaves of grass'. i assume i am the one who put it there, though i don't know why. sadly it was cash and so still only worth forty dollars. it couldn't have been there more than a couple of years at most, anyway.

i submit a principle for your consideration:

if you can't just find your place again in a book without a bookmark, either

1. start again from the beginning, or
2. give up on the book

Radical, but essentially my own subconscious position I think.

exception:

bookmarks for reference are acceptable.

I spent a day last year making bookmarks. I cut up some Balsa Wood into strips and then cut out some designs and superglued them together and then painted them. A spray of laquer and voila. I had a gluey, painted mess to keep my position.

It was a nice day though.

The problem with bookmarks is that anything fancier than a strip of paper or light card is really too much for a paperback, which is mostly what I read. So even though I like a nice pressed-flower or celtic wrought-iron marker as much as the next person, these things are useless to me.

I could use my cat as a bookmark if I didn't mind my books being pissed on, which I kind of do.

When I was much younger I used to never use bookmarks, but rather feverishly memorize page numbers. Then I realized that bookmarks are fun. (Buying books at bookstores in other cities and wanting to hold on to the free store bookmarks (or even the receipt) as a souvenir of where I got the book might have started it.)

When I was a teenager I would keep all my bus-tickets, and use half a bus ticket as a bookmark. When I regularly got trains, I used train tickets instead.

Always use unlined index cards on which I write quotes, page numbers, quick-referency stuff. When I'm finished I toss it into the front cover and keep it for reference. Surprising, really, how much I go back to pick out quotes fro mtexts.

Get thee to a grad school.

one time several years ago, i was looking for green paint and brought home many of those comparison strips with different shades and hues. too many. they've hung around as bookmarks ever since.

I seem to always use those annoying blown-in magazine subscription cards, though when I was travelling all the time boarding passes worked well. I have a leather one, painted to look like a raccoon on a log - I think it is still at the midpoint of A Distant Mirror. My favorite one is a long piece of purple ribbon, but the cat has removed it to parts unknown.

bookmarks are unnecessary because you can just fold over the edge of the page. so handy!

that doesn't always work for me, i think cuz i tend to toss books around and the pages unfold.

remy's technique sounds cool; in theory i'd really like to write shit down and that's a neat way to do it but when i'm reading it rarely occurs to me to record anything of note, i'm not sure why.

I just bought an old Everyman's Library copy of Dostoevsky's The House of the Dead that contained a vintage bookmark from a bookstore that no longer exists in New York called Concord Books. I love finds like that. I'm probably more excited about the bookmark than I am about the book.

My current book contains a promo card for the Nouvelle Vague album. I usually pick up some thick glossy music promo cards every time I go to a record store or a show and use those as bookmarks. I also have several Three Lives & Co. bookmarks that are wandering around in my books somewhere.

Also good: the cardboard pieces at the end of cigarette papers, boarding passes (agreed), old photographs...

I use bookmarks more for the speed and ease of locating the page, not the inability to do so without said piece of cardboard. (The thickness of the cardboard helps flip the book open to the precise spot.)

Haha wow this thread just tickled some neuron and reminded me that I put $1000 cash in The Wealth of Nations as a clever hiding place, ten years ago or so, and promptly forgot it. Just dug it out. I am so, so clever.

Wow! We sometimes keep cheques and gift vouchers inside Alvin Hall's Your Money or Your Life hoho but nothing in the region of $1000...

I use receipts (usually for that book).

i found a one dollar bill once that i used as a bookmark in a desperate moment.

i like scraps of paper as bookmarks. especially i grabbed a whole stack of little 1"x3" coupons for various discounts around the city and kept them in my bag and so i could infinitely tear them and use bits of them or even whole ones (so that when i needed to save another spot w/o my bag i could tear up part of the whole one) for books i was using for research. i eventually caved and got those special bookmark post-its.

1. bookmark that came with a promo of yo la tengo's painful
2. indiana turnpike receipt, 1996 (this one goes in the book of baseball quotes i keep in the bathroom)
3. complimentary tickets for shows i didn't attend at first ave, minneapolis, 1995-96
4. bookmark from munro's, victoria, bc
5. bookmark from the tattered cover, denver
6. a fatty

I often buy strange old postcards, and now I've started using them as bookmarks. All the books I'm reading now have curious Technicolor cats in them, pretty nice.

I thought this was what bus passes were made for!

FUCK A BOOKMARK. I fold the pages. THAT'S RIGHT.

Rubber bands are good for fat-spined paperbacks, also.

I used to use my ticket from the 1997 Rose Bowl, which I had laminated. I lost it four years ago after leaving it in a book that I re-sold to a used bookstore; reading this thread makes me nostalgic for it.

Nowadays I'm a big fan of page points. They're unobtrusive and they help identify EXACTLY where I left off.