Bookmarks and me. No not the web thingies. Yes. The paper thingies. Yes, well, it is a minor topic to blog about...

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Summary: Having spent about 10 minutes this morning looking for a particular bookmark, I thought it might be interesting to write about bookmarks. Interesting to me, at least...

BLOT: (08 Sep 2011 - 01:43:13 PM)

Bookmarks and me. No not the web thingies. Yes. The paper thingies. Yes, well, it is a minor topic to blog about...

I spent several minutes the morning looking for a cutesy, gaudy, plastic bookmark that is kind of glittery and teal [two things I normally approach with an emotion much like, but less passionate than, hate] and it has an octopus pictured. This last reason has lead me to use it for several of my Lovecraftian collections. The continued reuse is helped by the relative durability of the thicker plastic. I could not find it. I got really frustrated, started counting down the books I have read recently and thought about reading recently. Where could it be? The answer, strangely, and to get on with things, was on the back of my toilet. Which says...I'm not sure what. Presumably one night I had it in hand, stopped off to brush my teeth or something similar and laid it there to keep it from getting splashed on the sink. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

It is not the bookmark pictured below, note the lack of teal and glitter. The image below is something I ordered off of Etsy.

I show that image, though, because I want to take a moment to talk about the silliest thing. It strikes me as silly, it really does, but it is something I do obsess over from time to time: bookmarks. The paper, metal, plastic, wood, cloth, and who knows what else things you jab into a book to either mark your place or convince people who might spot your book that you are totally reading lots of big books and have made it quite far.* They are a bit of ephemera just about ubiquitous to the act of reading, unless you are a dirty, book folding, page breaking, dog-ear kind of person.** Or, like my wife, you do not use bookmarks at all.

When I say I "obsess" over bookmarks, I am torn between saying that I'm just joking and admitting that I have a problem. I have bookmarks of the throw-away variety, the kind you get at bookstores or reference desks or conferences, dating back to 1998 or 1999. I got it from the UAHuntsville bookstore. There was a promotion, a combination from eFollet.com and WebDecoder.com. You bought something, and it might have been "anything in the store" or maybe just something particular, I do not recall, and they gave you a plastic bookmark. There was a little wavy grid of words in the middle of it in a particular color. On the front of it. You would go online, make an account, and each account was granted this GIF or JPG that looked nonsense. The grid was a decoder, though, that helped you to see the hidden message. If you won, congrats! If not, thanks for your personal information, I suppose. I also have a bookmark featuring Squall from Final Fantasy VIII, part of a pre-order premotion which would have been 1999, and some bookmarks about how to relax and be stress free that I can guess came from my tenure as a Resident Advisor: 1999-2000.

From circa 2003 or 2004, I have a handful of bookmarks that are of the form probably most pictured by those of you with any interest in the things: cardboard stock with a pretty picture on one-side, some throw-away words and company logos on the back, and a tassel that falls apart if you ever actually use the bookmark as a bookmark. The most ambitious of these is a stack of six bookmarks from a Lord of the Rings tie-in. The movie came out 2002. Got them kind of late into the game. I'd say maybe 2004 from Waldenbooks. The very store I later went to work at.

Here's a fun story, I did not buy them, my nephew did when he lived here with us. Except he lived in what was our then smaller version library and they disappeared into the stacks of books. Through some unknown event, they really [insert one-ring joke now] disappeared. Could not locate them. Did not seem to be merely behind the bookcases. We recently refound them, but I have already forgotten how, which seems sad since it was kind of a mystery for about five years or so. I could give them back, and he might ask for them back if he ever reads this, but they are sooooo pretty let's keep that a secret, alright?

The next big bunch of bookmarks I have is circa 2005-2007. I was working at Book Gallery [post-Waldenbooks], which had half-priced books and half-priced book accessories, including a revolving display of really random bookmarks. Most are of the tasseled card-stock variety but some where kind of neat. The big ones I have from that time period are a pair of wooden ones with metal studs and a pair of leather ones. I used to have a couple other leather ones but I'm not sure where the others have gone.

I have hand-crafted bookmarks, both of the "made for me" and the "bought from various places" varieties. I have a couple of book-thongs, which seem like a great idea—a string or wire or etc with baubles on the end that act both as a bookmark and jewelry for your book—but they tend to fall out a bit more than average and the baubles at the top and bottom can make carrying the book a pain when you can neither store it upright or upside down (and spine up is a guarantee that the book-thong will tumble). I have a couple of clip-on bookmarks, the sort that use magnets so they can mark a space but they are pretty fragile and not really preferred by me after some use. I also have had a couple of the more "clip" style bookmarks, but I don't know where. My most [irony quote]special[/irony quote] place in the collection is a partial pack of coupons from the Day by Day Calendar stand. There used to be a regular sale where if you bought a calendar you would get a coupon that would be good for so much of a percentage off a regular priced item at Waldenbooks (or Borders in general, I think). About the time we were closing down, and I was there at the very end of the stand knocking stuff to bits so that burly men could take it all away, I must have picked up the open packet as an item that would immediately discarded and held on to it.

Lately, all my new acquisitions have tied into libraries, either coming directly from my alma mater—The University of Alabama—from my work place (UAHuntsville), or having been ordered personally from the ALA. The ALA—American Library Association—has bookmarks of the "READ" and "READING IS FUN" and "HELLO DEWEY DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM" that you can get, or your library can get, in packs of 100. Pretty perfunctory, but I dig 'em. I have a Neil Gaiman pack, a red READ pack, some that show off the Library of Congress classification system, and a slight mix of others.

I regularly lose bookmarks, who knows where. Some end up taking so much damage I put them down. Despite having a collection numbering into the hundreds (and dozens of decent ones) over more than a decade, I have no particular interest in preserving them [ignore my panicked, frantic search for octoteal this morning]. I no longer buy them in bookstores, not often, but (see above) will order them online. I should go around some place like Lowe Mill and see if anyone makes really cool ones. I have some ideas for bookmark crafts I want to make myself but not sure if I will ever have time. I really love using found bookmarks: playing cards, cards from various games, actual print photographs, postcards, business cards. I think combining that with some other ideas could be fun.

Ok, now that I have wasted this much of your time talking about bookmarks, how about you? Do you use them? Like them? Love them? Have a preference? Ever thinking about crafting your own? Do you immediately appreciate a book that comes with is own ribbon? I know, sexy hot, right? Come on, someone...geek out with me for a moment...

* Pro-tip: Get two bookmarks, one plain and one ornate. When reading a book like Infinite Jest, stick the plain one where you are at in the book, so that it either doesn't show up or looks like some sort of bit of note paper just rammed in there for quick extra-marginalia. The ornate one goes somewhere towards the back. "Page seven hundred and fifteen? I loved page seven-hundred and fifteen. I especially love the way that you cannot really talk about it, outside of general terms. It is an impressionistic painting of a page. In fact, I love it so much I am going to read it right now while you stand there, looking like you are about to ask me a follow-up question about it. One moment..."

** Somewhat just joking on the dog-ear hate. When I was younger, that's what I did. Fact is, you get good at it and it acts not only as a record of how far you read through the book each time (some books would only a couple of notches while others would have many) but you train yourself to do the little page riffles and the nature of the notching means it opens right up to your page. Like a magic trick. I don't anymore. I was a teenager then.

Libraries

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: September 2011


Written by Doug Bolden

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