Bookmarks...

[fajrdrako]

for Nov. 19, 2009: What items have you ever used as a bookmark? What is the most unusual item you’ve ever used or seen used?

I like to use postcards as bookmarks. They have good pictures, they often have good memories attached, they're substantial enough to hold a page, and they're the right size for most books. I particularly love using the postcards I sent home to my parents when I was a student in England; they're nice memorabilia, and they mostly show pictures of castles.

I also use commercial bookmarks. Occasionally when I'm really stuck for a bookmark, I tear a pace out of a magazine, fold it in six, and use it. Sometimes when I want to mark a particular passage or line, I'll use a post-it note, at least in theory. But I've never done that often. Occasionally I use theatre tickets or business cards.

I don't think I've ever used anything really strange, but I do have a bookmark story. There's a book I read first when I was an undergraduate student at Carleton University, back in the early 1970s, called Chronique d'Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, a 12th century historical work written in Old French. In the 1980s I got it from the library again from time to time, for a reread. I can't read Old French very quickly, so I checked it out several times. Then a couple of years ago... I believe I mentioned it in my LJ at the them... I checked the book out because I hadn't read it in twenty years, and wanted to look at it again. Someone had left their bookmark in the book, a postcard with a picture of the Justice League of America. It was dated to the mid-1980s. It was my postcard.

I figure I'm the only person in Ottawa who ever actually read that book.