A late addition to the 'Judge Me...' threads, I know, but I was just thinking about this last night. I've used the same thing to mark my page for about 15 years. It's a playing card from a deck given away by the NME - Flavor Flav as the joker - a bit tattered round the edges but still going strong.

Anyone else have a special bookmarker? Page-corner folders, especially of library books, will be judged harshly.

Tickets for railway journeys. Very handy.

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Anyone else have a special bookmarker? Page-corner folders, especially of library books, will be judged harshly.

Oh, my books get abused. Not only have I been known to turn over the odd corner (when nothing more apt is at hand), books that I'm reading in bed tend to get chucked on the floor, wide open, cracking the spines into a million crinkly pieces.

Besides that, my longest standing bookmark is a pornographic playing card showing a saucy lady crapping in a gentleman's mouth.

I've never understood people that pay money for bookmarks.

Generally the boarding pass from the last flight I was on because I have to find somewhere to put it when I get on the plane and in the pages of the book is the obvious place.

I'm happy to abuse books, thrash them to within an inch of their lives. But I've never been a corner-folder.

Bookmarks are bourgeois.

I fold over the corners of pages. What's the big deal? Is it the item or the words within that you're interested in?

I'm with Citizen Grundy on this one. I fold the corners (and then try to neatly unfold them afterwards).

I'm with GO and Chubby; transport-related bookmarks are the way to go.

And I would consign people who use flourescent highlighters on library books to a special circle of ursine hell.

I genrally don't use any device to mark my plave in a book, although I occasionally leave the book open, face down, in a place where I know I'm going to return to it.

Page folding is the action of vandals and illtelectuals

The problem with page folding is forgetting to unfold pages so ending up with two or three fold marks and forgetting where you are. Admittedly I can do similar as, at the moment, I have a physio appointment card, two boarding passes and two travelcards acting as my bookmark and I sometimes leave one behind on the wrong page.

In his later years, my father became a voracious reader of potboiler mystery novels, often going through three or four in a single day.

My poor mother, who had the task of getting him "new" ones, resorted to lightly circling a particular page number in pencil before returning any volume to the library, so that she could quickly determine if the volumes she picked off the shelf did indeed qualify as "new" (the titles, covers and everything else intrinsic to the books themselves being much too similar for anyone (including my father) to determine this quickly with certainty).

Extenuating circumstances, M'lud.

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The problem with page folding is forgetting to unfold pages so ending up with two or three fold marks and forgetting where you are.

I'd have thought that the folded corner nearest to the end of the book would be a shrewd first guess, wouldn't you?

Hmm. Good point.

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lightly circling a particular page number in pencil before returning any volume to the library, so that she could quickly determine if the volumes she picked off the shelf did indeed qualify as "new"

Lots and lots of people do this. Everyone has a different little personal mark - look in any library book and you'll see different coloured crosses, circling of page 35, etc etc. I think it's sweet.

I use train tickets and cinema tickets and football tickets usually. I always leave them in the book as a sort of reminder of the time/place I read it.

Yeah, I like to leave my tickets in as well.

Travel tickets, or football tickets (currently using my derby ticket from last month) or occasionally photos or postcards.

Under Anne Fadiman's classification I am more a courtly not a carnal book lover; I agree that the ideas are the vital thing, not the object. But we show our respect for the idea through our respect for the object, no? That said I have no problem reading trashy paperbacks in the bath. If they fall in, they fall in.

I remember the page number. Not being able to do this is a sign of a lack of intellectual rigour. Losers.