Bookmarks!

For a long while after that the only sounds were that of Skander's book falling to his lap and he was quite asleep, and the tinselly rustle of the fire that was slowly putting Margaret to sleep as well...
Plenilune

I'm sure you have at least once in your life experienced that awful moment when, in a hurry, distracted from your book, trying to accommodate the haste of another, you let your book drop shut. Without the bookmark. I'm sure you know that awful moment in which you stared paralyzed at your tome, willing the bookmark to be in the book, unable to actually believe what has happened. Then you click into motion again. Nothing else matters. The scramble for the bookmark ensues, the scramble for your place, the hopeless wailing in your head which only you can hear. You had been wrapped up in the story: you can't remember what page you were on, or what chapter number you had just passed. All that mattered before was the story. Even the book itself had ceased to exist until that fateful moment when you let it close (like locking a door with the keys on the wrong side) without its bookmark in place.

Bookmarks get very little press or appreciation, yet they are so very important. You never appreciate them until they are suddenly not there, and then the fate of the entire world hangs upon the recovery of a small card of paper which your mother may or may not have slipped into the trash, mistaking it for...trash. Nobody else understands, of course. The world is a very hard-hearted place. This is a terror which must be experienced to be understood. Poor little bookmarks. I love them so.

Bookmarks come in a variety of breeds, and they are not a very proud or pompous lot. You can find them in many shapes and sizes. Some are three-by-five index cards. Some are ripped-off pieces of college-ruled paper. Some are napkins folded over and severely crumpled. Some are those sheeny, odd advertisement bookmarks that Amazon and Alibris are fond of stuffing in along with your order. Some are sticky-notes. They could be disused coin sheaths, or a letter from a friend. In short, anything small and remotely papery may or may not be recruited into the ranks of bookmarkery. Oftentimes bookmarks are whatever comes easily to hand when you need to put your book down. They are usually unassuming and not always very pretty, which fact is largely responsible for their being so thoroughly taken for granted.

I have quite a horror of laying books open on their faces. It isn't good for their spines and I like my books to be well looked after and to last long. So I use bookmarks, and I am very proud of my bookmarks. They aren't expensive or grand (in fact, they are a little eccentric), but they do the job and I love them. The one which looks like a calling-card for Hollister Jeans had been keeping my place in Howl's Moving Castle, but having finished that it is waiting for a new book. The advertisement card for Twinings chai tea is matched up with Of the Imitation of Christ right now (the reds and golds look so nice together). The bookmark with the red tassel and the painting of King Peter (the Magnificent) is keeping my place in the first chapter of God the Center of Value, and the tasseled, Celtic bookmark is holding my place in time and bookishness within The Golden Warrior. I discovered that the brand tags for jeans make excellent bookmarks: Red Rivet Jeans is a thick, card-stock fellow with pretty type and a black ribbon: he holds my place in The Art of Medieval Hunting; my grey L.E.I bookmark with its tattered white ribbon is holding place in Blood Feud, and my lace-woven L.A.L. tag is waiting patiently in David Copperfield.

I know them all and I am very fond of them. I am heartbroken when any of them gets misplaced, but thankfully they seem to love me too, since they always turn back up again. They are as dear to me as the books I read, and very much like companions, always there reading with me (though I fear they get a very disjointed view of the content of my books, as I don't insert them in every page as I go). There may be no frigate like a book, but without The American Practical Navigator of bookmarks sailing would be rough.

Appreciate your bookmarks!