Bookmarks - pretty, practical, or whatever is convenient?

When I was posting on another thread, I realized we had never talked about one of the essential tools of all readers, the bookmark.

I have oodles of pretty bookmarks, but they are often not where I need them to be! I have used receipts, empty sugar packets, napkins, a toothpick (only once!), business cards, and bills and various things that come in the mail. One of the books I am currently reading has a Quizno's reward card in it as a bookmark.

I used a dollar bill once, but it didn't last very long because I needed it for something the next day.

I like those bookmarks from Levengers. They used to be called "stretch markers" but are now called the more PC book bungies. They're great when you carry your current read around in your purse or backpack, as I do.
In general, though, I use whatever is at hand even though I own many many bookmarks.

I find myself using post-it notes quite often. Although I also use stuff like the post-card that comes tucked into new Shambhala Press books, but those tend to stay with the book they were originally in. I have a copy of the Soul of Christianity signed by Huston Smith, that still has the flyer from the talk by him I got the book at, as well as the receipt.

Like Child_of_Light, I often use post-it notes. Or whatever other scrap of paper is on hand. I used to buy all sorts of "real" bookmarks, but I would lose them or just never have them on hand when I needed them, so I gave up on that.

Expanded Universe by Robert Heinlein (which is a library book) currently has a notice from the library about a book sale as a bookmark.

Bookmarks --- the ones designed for the purpose --- always seem to disappear. (They are probably in various books around the house, marking a note near the back or something.) I use anything clean & dry within reach.

I use any scrap of paper lying around pretty much. I've been trying lately to use actual bookmarks, or at least bookmark-shaped papers, but it doesn't work very well when I start a new book and there isn't a bookmark for me. I like pretty bookmarks, but I know I'll just lose them or forget where they are or stop reading the book they're in, so I don't bother with them any more.

Whatever is convenient and relatively flat. Napkins, business cards, post it notes. I've even been known to dog ear corners (which I'm sure will make several of you just shudder). If the book has a dust jacket, I'll sometimes use the flaps of that as a book mark, although that doesn't work too well on really thick books (like A Storm of Swords, my current read).

All of the above. As long as it's clean and (vaguely) flat, I'll use it. :o) I've used baseball cards, Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, kids drawings, receipts, appointment cards, string and even toilet paper (unused, of course) when I couldn't find anything else suitable at the moment I needed it.

I hate leaving a book open face-down to hold my place, even if it's a crappy paperback copy.

Never done toilet paper, lol....

But yes, anything else that's flat will do. Business cards, receipts, brochures, torn off corners of paper, anything.

One thing that's a bit neurotic that I do, is whatever I start using for a bookmark for a book, it stays the bookmark for the whole read, no matter what.

There is absolutely no sane reason for this behavior. I just do it.

I used to use whatever was available, but over the past few years I've migrated to regular bookmarks. I've got some nice ones people have made for me, but lately I've been very attached to my Oriental Carpet bookmarks. I've got the third one on the top row, (which I use for fiction), and the fifth one on the bottom row, (which I use for nonfiction).

Like most everyone here, I use whatever is available. I'm currently using a Starbuck's gift card for Elantris. I've wanted a Mocha Frappuccino all day! :)

My favorite bookmark is one I ordered from my nephew for a school fundraiser. The students drew pictures of their favorite things and a company created various objects with the drawings on them. His drawing was of a zebra fish. I hesitate to use it because I'm afraid I'll lose it! I guess that defeats the purpose of having it.

I actually don't use anything most of the time. I just remember approximately where I am and flip until I see where I left off. I will use dust jacket flaps, and if I have something handy, I may use it (receipts, index cards, whatever) but I usually just close the book and remember.

#8 & 9

If you are in the "reading room," you use the paper available. :-)

I used to have tons of bookmarks, when I was in high school I would buy books and bookmarks to go with them but they never seemed to last long.

Now a days I use whatever is at hand. I think I've used bussines cards, my waterstones voucher book, a burger king time food marker, trading cards, a necklace chain, my credit card, and an empty packet of baby wipes which got replaced with a sandwhich bag for some reason ;P

I have a flat starved and startled looking fuzzy mouse that I use when I read mysteries. When I read my Lord Peter books (reading through the canon right now with a group) I use a stained glass (paper) one with a design of a peacock on it. Lord Peter had a robe covered in peacocks. I have another stained glass pattern that looks like a cross in the middle of some trees that I use for my Christian books. Then I have various bookmarks which have been given or made for me over the years. I keep them in a box by my reading chair to choose from. Yes, I am always misplacing them, but usually find them in the next major roundup of dirt, dust and clutter from my home. That being said, I also grab whatever is handy until I can find the one I was using.

We recently had a young couple return a check to us that we had given them for their wedding over a year ago. She had just found it in a cookbook and wasn't sure if it was still good.

oooh, good subject... I have a large stack (probably around a hundred all told) of two or three different bookmarks... I used to work in a bookshop, and when these freebies came in, I ended up inheriting (read: stole! But sssssh, otherwise they might want them back all these years later) a large pile of them (don't worry, there were plenty left for the customers, I swear), and I've been using them ever since.

I also have a couple of old leather bookmarks that my parents gave me 20 odd years ago now, in fact one of them is a commemorative bookmark celebrating the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana... I was 4 when that happened. It's kinda nice to know that I needed a bookmark at 4 years of age :-)

I sometimes stay at "Shangi-La" hotels. They leave a nice bookmark at the side of your bed. If you take it, they leave another one next day. It has a "thought for the day" printed on it and a piece of thin ribbon attached to the bottom.

I have a pile of them.

I collect bookmarks. Gimme else I come to your homes and rearrange all your books and... DOGEAR them... and... and... CRACK THEIR SPINES!

LOL, morphy. I have a bunch, but some of them are still stuck in books that I never finished. *blush* I don't want to take them out, because I may go back and finish the book.

One of my current favorites is an old BOOK-WOMAN bookmark, which just resurfaced in one of my desk drawers. :o) I also have several Lord of the Rings bookmarks I like, but Bart always attacks the tassels, so some of them only have a single thread remaining. :oS

It was suggested, in another similar thread, that LT sell bookmarks in the cafepress store. They would be easy to make but no one has followed through on this. I wonder why? I owuld buy 100 and leave them in strategic places. Great advertising.

I tend to use the receipt or shipping notice for a book, if it has one. If it doesn't, or if I bought a bunch of books at the same time, I use whatever's around - last summer my standby was the top half of a grocery-store calling card, recently it's been a business-card-like coupon for free bowling.

#13
LOL. That's really funny.hehe.

Well, I should use a bookmark. I always tell myself, "Next time you're at the bookstore, buy a bookmark!" but I get so distracted with getting books I always forget.=) So I usually use a piece of paper. I just bought an ipod shuffle and there's a perfect sized instruction card that came with it that's sturdy, so I've been using that for a bookmark.

I can't remember the last time I bought a bookmark. Usually I use receipts, business cards, ticket stubs, that phone number from the waiter at Friday's...

I usually use blow-ins from magazines. They're just the right size and it's a good form of recycling. But I'll use whatever comes to hand, including TP.

I have a bunch of LOTR bookmarks, but the metal things attached to the tassles are too heavy and I hate that. I'd rather tack them to the wall so I can look at them. Ah, Legolas....

I like using actual bookmarks but will use just about any scrap of paper, paperclips, photographs, kids trading cards or whatever is handy if I have to.

Currently I'm using a bookmark that I received in my son's photo package from school about 6 years ago. It's very sturdy, made of plastic and it makes me laugh because he has this very surprised expression on his face in the picture.

For trade paperbacks and hardcovers I have an Edgar Allen Poe bookmark from Barnes & Noble, it's a card with the familiar B&N caricature drawing on one side and a brief biography on the other side, sealed in plastic.

For mass-market paperbacks, I've got a bunch of the free bookmarks Strand Bookstore gives you when you purchase from them.

My wife has numerous bookmarks, angels, dachshunds, Virginia Woolf. I'm the type who reads one book at a time, one after the other. She often has 3 or 4 going at the same time, so she needs more bookmarks.

I never use bookmarks because once I start reading a book I have a compulsion to finish it before I do anything else.

I do have some laminated flowers that would make lovely bookmarks though.
There are a few bookmarks I have bought and never used but they were all bought on the basis of a neat quote, or the look of them.

Gimme Gimme Gimme

Earlier I used a lot of different bookmarks, including about everything already mentioned here (well, no, I don't think I've ever used toilet paper, and that mouse of yours MrsLee sounds suspicious ;-) ) and used to have a stack of those Amazon bookmarks that came with every delivery (actually I also have a mousemat + a thermos mug I received from them unasked for as christmas gifts during two successive years in the mid 90's or something) but since some years back I use my memory, as described by mi2 in msg #12.

When reading hardbacks I use the flaps of the dustjacket, that's all.

:-)

I have one bookmark for the book I'm officially reading...and random scraps of paper, magazine inserts, Christmas cards, post it notes, paper clips, etc. in all of the other books that contain something I think I'll need to find later, especially ones I'm using for school. It makes rereading almost like a treasure hunt sometimes.

I feel your pain. I use whatever I can lay my hands on, as a bookmark. For instant; forks, diapers, junkmail, commercial papers, stamps, mobilephone, etc. The ordinary bookmarks are simply never to be found, when needed.

#31 - DIAPERS!!!!?????!!!!

:oS

I'm with #12 - I just never get around to using a bookmark. So, I will remember where I was - and it's usually not as much a page number as it is about how far into the current chapter. I will go back to that general area, and then hunt for my last page. Yeah, this takes about 15-60 seconds to do this, whereas a bookmark would make it immediate, but that's what I do.

#31 and #32 - Forks?? That one sounds a little dangerous! :)

And mobile phone? humm....a bit bulky.

Yogurt.

>>35 Atomicmutant: May the Schwarz be with you

...evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

I have a bunch of bookmarks, but like a lot of people here, they never seem to be at hand when I need them. I work in a library and sometimes when I'm doing bookdrop I'll find interesting things that people have left in books, sometimes they are seemingly important documents. One time I found a packet of photos that someone had left in a book, and one time I found a book in the library that had an overdue notice from our library in it as a bookmark, mind you we send them all out via e-mail now, this letter ended up being from the seventies!!! So be careful to take those bookmarks out when returning books!

Right now I'm using a tag from a pair of pajama bottoms (that I didn't buy, I don't know where it's from) in my night-stand book and a hotel-card key that I forgot to return when I was at a convention recently for my purse-book.

>#37 Ha ha, that's the quote I have on the bottom of my email.

#37 - ...and that's why I resent being called a "good" person ;-)

I think the best, most appropriate odd bookmark I've ever used was when I was reading a Mae West bio for a class. I used the tag off a pair of lacy underwear. I like to think Mae would have appreciated that.

one of many? threads about bookmarks.

I always use 'real' ones.

I wouldn't say I collect them, but I do pick up a lot. I had to travel to a several cities for work a few years ago, and a bookmark was a great memento for me. Not too heavy or bulky or expensive.

My favourites are thin metal sheets and designs. I'm a great figiter when I read, so paper bookmarks tend to get bent and creased, but the metal you can just twiddle with all day - apart from some chinese ones I picked up that are possibly more fragile than paper, very very thin.

My single most favourite was from a friend when my partner was having a particularly bad time - it was just great to know that I was still cared for too...and it was a very reasonable one in its own right.

After thinking about it, I remember using bookmarks as a child. I had a set of three Peanuts-themed bookmarks - blue, yellow, orange - with the orange one being somewhat transluscent, and I loved them and used them for a couple of years.

I wonder if they are still somewhere at my parents' house...

I do use bookmarks. I've got two plastified Star Wars CCG cards (the CCG was by Decipher, NOT the new one). A Tie and a Lambda-class shuttle. I've used for years. When I read more then three books at a time, I use whatever other card is handy and since I don't play anymore that is just about any one...

#32 - Yes: diapers. I have two kids. So diapers are to be found in every corner of this house (especially since the oldest one loves to run around with them).

I get a new paper bookmark from a local used bookstore every time I make a purchase, so I try to use those. However, since I hit the ATM about every other day I find myself using the receipts I get from that transaction quite often.

It's alternately amusing and depressing when I find one of those in a book I've put down for weeks/months and see what the bank balance was at the time. ;)

Funny!

#42, Reading Fox, you might try elastic bands - this from a fellow fidgeter. They make great bookmarks and you can fidget away while reading. They don't crinklebendfoldrip, ... and, unless you get to a really tense part of your book, they don't generally snap!! :)

Our library where I teach gets bookmarks for the kids to use, and when the LOTR movies were coming out, there were bookmarks with all the characters. I have 2 copies of the entire set of 10. I don't use those!

I never thought about collecting bookmarks, morph. I wonder why I haven't??? I just might start doing this. (I have visions of albums of bookmarks, my kids looking at them, shaking their heads, thinking that Mom's obsession with books is getting worse)

#1 - I've used playing cards, trading cards, and gaming cards, in addition to almost all of what you listed. I use receipts a lot. Sometimes I just fold a sheet of paper, tear off a bit of a bag, whatever I can find.

I do enjoy using REAL bookmarks, but i always seem to lose them.

Oh, I also used to like to use a strip of perfectly fried bacon, but I lost my favorite strip when I left it in a library book by accident...

;>P

9 - Never done toilet paper, lol...

Never? Oh that's right, you ARE a giant floating disembodied brain, so your needs aren't the same as ours...

#35 - Yogurt.

You too, huh?

Maaaan, I HOWLED out loud when I got to yogurt, you caught me completely off guard!

I go back and forth between real bookmarks and documents. I tend to carry a book with me everywhere so I usually place anything I need inside my books. Checks, receipts, student papers, anything is game. At other times I use real bookmarks. I just ordered a bunch of "page points" from Levengers to use as permanent bookmarks (I hope that this will prevent me from perpetuating my horrible practice of dog earing pages in books that I am going to teach out of). Hopefully these "page points" work well and won't damage my books (I figure they can't be worse than dog earing the pages).

#50- Bwaa haa haa! Very good groo! :o)

Oh, and it was me with the TP usage, not our mutated friend. It's usually just one sheet, or even a half a sheet... and it's only a temporary measure! ;o)

Money! I've been known to use $1, $5, or whatever denomination was handy to mark my place. At least once I've rediscovered my 'loot' at just the right time i. e. when I was broke.

I use any flat piece of material that comes to hand. I usually grab a few free ones at the library. I have bought some that are very pretty but can't keep track of them. If I come across a wide stretchy rubber band I will use that to hold my pages

Vanye
I must have bought some of your used books in the past. I really enjoy finding folding money in 50 cent book.

All of the above. I've got a bunch of business cards from a former employee who went to work at a tatoo shop called 'Thinkin Ink' that I started using for place markers.
I've also found various things in hardback books that I used or stashed to keep safe and forgot about: some crisp unfolded $2 bills, a state tax return check, and a work bonus check that I found a week after the office called me about it, due to it never being cashed.
It's interesting to find other people's photos in books that you buy used. I'm always wondering whether or not to try finding the person and return the picture. (When there is identifying info on the back or in the pic.)

I used to grab some from whatever bookstore I was in or the library if they had any. Recently, I've been made aware that Michael's (an arts and crafts chain store out here) sells plain book marks, so I go and buy packs of 30 or 50 for roughly $3.50 and have plenty on hand. This allows me to leave one in each book once I've finished, so if I ever want to go back and re-read, I don't have to go hunting for another bookmark.

#59 what a good idea!

Ok, semi off topic, but does anyone know a good place to buy bookmarks online? Searching for bookmarks using google just brings up a bunch of links to internet bookmark management site.

>I've been made aware that Michael's (an arts and crafts chain store out here) sells plain book marks,

*blink blink*

Oh dear gods, I didn't need to know that. I really didn't.

*whimpers*

Child of Light, Levengers.com sells bookmarks under the "reading tools" category. Pricey, but...

Trying to avoid the problem you ran into, I Googled for "page markers" without the quotes.

I just use the receipt I got by purchasing the book. Not glamorous, but economical.

I used to use a book mark I made a couple years back, it had puff paint on it, smooshed flat from to much use, I'm not quite sure where it is right now. In the book I'm reading for school I have a tri-folded half sheet of paper that I'm also using as a character log (required). Recently I've used corners of notebook paper becasue I can't find my bookmarks.

I never used to use bookmarks - I'd either finish the book in one sitting or just remember where I was. But recently (in the past couple years) I've started reading more than one book at a time, so I've started using bookmarks. I have stashes of them near all my reading places, so I have a fighting chance of finding one when I want it...

Most of mine are free cardboard ones from somewhere - library, used book store, Weight Watchers, whatever. I'll also use anything that's vaguely the right size and shape - old membership cards, business cards, postcards - or in desperation will tear off a corner of paper from whatever scrap paper is near and use that (newspaper, newsletters, envelopes...).

I have some very nice bookmarks - the metal ones that have a prong and a slot to hold in place. But a) they're too nice to use and maybe lose, and b) they're somewhat awkward because they stick up too high and they're somewhat likely to dent or tear the page. So they're with my artworks - in boxes at the moment, eventually in one of my typetrays. It's something I get as a gift frequently.

I'd like to mention also that my grandchildren are very fond of pulling bookmarks from books that have pretty edges or ribbons. Another reason I don't use them!

I have been known to use a paper clip. I don't put them on the page but simply stick them in between the pages. Peppermint wrappers work too.

I grabbed a bookmark from the library last night cause I really liked it. its cardboard shaped like a sarcophagus.

Bus tickets work really well as bookmarks, I've discovered lately. I remembered that I used to have a bunch of Lord of the Rings bookmarks that my brother gave to me and that I really liked. I wonder where those are.

My current bookmarks, in the three books I'm reading right now (although I might have given up on one and just not realized it yet) are the receipt from the library, a receipt from my bank, and an card about a library book sale that I forgot to go to.

my bookmark has been a letter about a bank wanting to give me a credit card. It works well

I dont always use a bookmark but when I do it is definitely a whatever is handy thing for me. I have bookmarks but they are just in a group and never touched.
At the moment I have one book with a bank statement in, one has a bus ticket and the other 2 have the their dust jacket leaves in them

Ah yes! I love the old 'dust jacket leaf as a bookmark' trick, LittleKnife! Don't you hate when the books is really fat, and you reach about the halfway point and the leaf won't stay in place anymore?

#73 and #74 (hey you!)

Yeah, I do the dust jacket mark bit, too! ;ately I've been using my business card, now that afyter 1 YEAR AND A HALF my order finally came in! Hey, I'm putting it to good use, huh?

As I currently read The Lord of the Rings I'm using a bookmark picturing Egg Rock Lighthouse, which is off the coast of Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. I must have purchased it in 2004 when my wife and I visited. Doing some Spring cleaning 2 weeks ago I found it in a bag with some brochures we picked up while up there.

Heyyyy, Egg Rock Lighthouse! I've been there!!!

#73 & 74 & 75 - I use the dust jacket a bit sometimes, but since I've been looking up book values for collectibles and resale, I'm scared to do it. Books are worth SO much more if their dust jacket is in pristine condition.

#74 - urgh yes I hate it when they keep falling out, but its a really good excuse to keep reading "sorry cant stop now I'll lose my place..." well it works in my head anyway.
#78 I know, but its a)so tempting to use when they are right there b)so difficult to keep the dust jacket pristine and take the book anywhere.
A couple of books I wanted to keep in particularly good shape I had to put their dust jackets somewhere else so they didn't slide & rip etc in my bag or get folded up on the shelf (I have a real shelving issues - not enough walls) where another book was stacked on top

I've spent so much money on cute, clever bookmarks ... and WHERE ARE THEY WHEN I NEED THEM???

I don't even necessarily stick to flat objects any more. Currently, my copy of the Borders exclusive about Snape's guilt or innocence (Harry Potter, for those who don't follow that series) is being marked by the headband I had on at the time I needed to mark my place. Fellowship of the Ring, my other current (re)read, is being marked by a half-empty bag of Halls Defense Vitamin C drops.

... and I HAVE probably a dozen bookmarks for each series.

Madness.

Madness, I tell ya! ;-)

>#80 Alanna, a friend of mine actually contributed to one of those books called The Great Snape Debate and actually got billing over Orson Scott Card on the cover! Ok, so it's because her last name comes before his alphabetically, but we like to pretend that's not the case ;)

darnit, amazon isn't listing the book, but I saw it at a local Border's, I swear!

It's actually set up in a neat way. One half of the book is made up of arguments for Snap being good and the other half for bad. You actually flip the book over to start reading one or the other side of the debate.

Oh, I want that book, I cannot decide about Snape. But of course no Borders in Germany :(

One of the used bookstores I go to gives me a bookmark when I buy something. They're bright yellow, printed with the company name and a little blurb below that which reads:

"These books were owned by a little old lady who never read faster than 50 words a minute."

cute!

On the issue of using jacket flaps for bookmarks...

To me, books are there to be read/used. And as I don't buy for selling later at collectors price, or even to sell at all (I buy books for keeping, those I don't want to keep I give to charity...) I have no problem using flaps as bookmarks :-)

Yes Busifer, I agree with you, but I inherited a lot of books, many of which I don't want to read. When I looked them up on a whim, the price difference of some of them went from under $10 to over $100, the difference being whether it had a pristine jacket cover. Let's just say it gave me pause for thought. However, I don't like to think of my possessions, especially books, in terms of their re-sale value. I don't know if I will ever get around to listing these books I want to sell, I'm only saving those with a value over $20, the rest go to the Friends of the Library.