The Pleasures of Improvised Bookmarks
Why use a conventional bookmark when you can use a ticket stub, a photograph, or some other object that has its own backstory?
A recent Inconspicuous News Roundup included an item about a guy who works at a bookstore and collects the improvised bookmarks that people have left in the used books that pass through his shop. That prompted a comment from reader Peter K., who mentioned that he had a whole rotation of improvised bookmarks.
I followed up off-list with Peter, who said:
I have always been a collector of miscellaneous debris — ticket stubs, stickers, shirt tags — and enjoy using them as bookmarks. This is better for the miscellaneous items (instead of being stashed in a junk drawer or decaying in a landfill, they get to have a continued purpose), and I also find it more satisfying than using conventional bookmarks that don’t have a backstory.
You can see a bunch of Peter’s improvised bookmarks in the photo above. At my request, he explained the significance of some of these items (the numbers in the photo correspond to the following paragraph numbers):