The “Page Anchor” is made of precious metals, comes in four different colors . . . and it costs forty bucks! But, hey, if you want to splurge on a bookish gift for yourself or a book-loving friend or relative this year, this might be a handy thing to have.
Here’s the link with the sales videos and ordering information.
Although there’s really no reason to buy bookmarks for oneself – there are so many things around most people’s houses one can use – there may be a booklover in your life you might want to buy a fancier-than-absolutely-necessary bookmark for.
Biblioblogger and bibliopodcast creator Anne Bogel recently posted to her blog “Modern Mrs. Darcy” a roundup of 20 unusual bookmarks. Some of them are a bit pricey, but, hey, there’s no danger in at least taking a gander at them all.
Incidentally, having just completed reading Bogel’s excellent 2018 book I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life, I’ve added a link to Bogel’s blog to the Atlanta Booklover’s Blog’s blogroll so you can conveniently find it.
This is a display of some of the bookmarks found by shelvers at a nearby public library. Note the wide variety of objects readers grab to mark their places in the books they borrowed (and forgot to retrieve before returning them).
Murray Browne, a fellow local biblioblogger who saw this library display decided to (a) take the photo above and (b) describe the rationale for his decision to use only one type of object for his own bookmarks: postcards.
Until reading Murray’s blogpost, I’d been using for my own bookmarks mostly slivers of old calendars and cut-outs from magazines with images I particularly liked. I keep these (along with any storebought bookmarks that’ve come my way) in a vase I think particularly suited to storing them in a way that gives me an easily-scannable way to choose one I feel in the mood to use for the book I am reading. I keep the vase of these reuseable bookmarks on the table adjacent to my favorite reading spot so it’ll be handy whenever I must, mid-book, interrupt my reading.
Although I’m not sure a collection of postcards would fit as handily in this particular vase as a collection of postcards would, I do find the idea of using postcards as bookmarks an appealing one – especially since I have on hand so many dozens of wonderful postcards that I know I’ll never mail to anyone.
Do you have your own method of keeping nearby a supply of bookmarks – or do you, like so many other readers, grab whatever you can use the moment the need arises? (Please tell me you have never used a slice of bacon as a bookmark? Librarians have reported that happening – and worse!)
Courtesy Book Riot, a round-up of some nifty bookmarks You Can Make Your Very Self.
Attention all holiday bookish gift-creators (vs. bookish gift-buyers): Instructions for making these nifty bookmarks yourself are here, at Design Mom.
Found via Book Riot
“You can tell a lot about someone from their bookmarks. For the reader, they perform a vital role. They are guardians standing in the way of threads being lost, plot points missed. They are a fixed point, a sliver of paper lingering in the gulf between what went before and what is yet to come, like some Dickensian ghost. It is not a job to be given lightly, so we choose our bookmarks wisely.”
– Edd McCracken, The Secret Life of Bookmarks
Found at BookRiot via Reading-as-Breathing;
bookmarks by Enthusiastic Artist
A few years ago, the library-organizing outfit called LibraryThing asked its users what they use for bookmarks, and here’s what those readers use.
What do you use?
While we’re on the subject of bookmarks, elsewhere at LibraryThing is a discussion of unusual (and often disgusting) bookmarks people have discovered in library books they’ve borrowed, or inside books they’ve browsed or bought in second-hand bookstores.
Found via BoingBoing
Layne Farley summarizes her investigation into the one-time practice of bookstores providing bookmarks to their customers.
Found at BiblioBuffet
At $24 (plus a $5 shipping charge) for the set, these are pricey, but still pretty wonderful:
Details at Designboom.
Found at Bookn3rd, which found it at WebUrbanist.
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