I don't bother, usually (except for my nice Patrick O'Brian set, since it has one of those cool ribbon things). If I can't remember where I was, then I probably don't like the book very much (or need to start over anyway).

I have a million freebies tucked into books by clerks when the books were bought, even at used-book stores.

I use some bookmarks that have sentimental meaning--some prized really nice bookmarks from the UCLA BookZone when I worked there. The operations center of the entire student store purchased those for us, but decided they cost too much, so we didn't have them for a long time.

I also have some from Midnight Special, a great lefty bookstore (quotation on the back: "Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon," Bertolt Brecht) that unfortunately closed about five years ago. And some from Book Soup, when I worked there.

I also use stubs from the boarding passes from past flights.

I'm a dreadful corner bender. Worse I hilite passages in my own books and (I know...I know) even lightly underline in library books. For me books and journals are either data storage, entertainment, or love objects. I have few of the latter and treasure them accordingly, the rest I treat like shit. I'm a fascist at heart.

I use big (3")metal paperclips with rounded ends to avoid them tearing the pages.

They fit snugly over the top of pages and dont fall out when the books bouncing around in my rucksack,etc.

Maybe I'm weird,but I have a real fear of loosing bookmarks,especially ones tht I really like or have fond memories of where I got them.

I must have about 20-30 diffrent in various books,drawers,etc.

This thread feels unpleasantly intimate, like reading about people's arse-wiping techniques or something.

I'm a folder, by the way.

i don't mind creasing and smashing and wrecking a book to within an inch of it's life, but i draw the line at annotating and underlining in the pages of a book. ms. beak does it, and it always niggles me.

i didn't even do that to textbooks, for god's sake.

Fuzzy Dunlop - I've still got that NME deck, though mine's in a box in the loft and consequently in pretty good nick.

Should I hijack and talk about it here, or start a thread in Music?

Or not bother.

Yeah, I've still got mine as well, KM. It's lying around in a drawer somewhere in the house.

Thinking about it more, I don't really know why I use a bookmark. I always remember where I am in the book, if not the actual page number. I guess I've had it that long it's become a habit using it. I think I'd be a wee bit upset if I lost it.

Using a highlighter is something I've only done once. It felt so wrong that I've never did it since.

Spine breaking doesn't bother me that much. Sometimes it just has to be done.

I've got that NME deck too. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that I modified mine at the time (1992) to rectify the omission of the Manic Street Preachers in favour of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine.

i draw the line at annotating and underlining in the pages of a book. ms. beak does it, and it always niggles me.

i didn't even do that to textbooks, for god's sake.

Sorry I don't agree, to me a book is an interactive living document. I love going back to texts I read twenty-odd years ago and finding comments scrawled in the margins: "Did I really believe that?" I have my Dad's school copies of Dickens and they're interspersed with his marginal notes, a brilliant glimpse into who he has back then, one I wouldn't have otherwise. I don't even mind finding them in library books. I don't do it but I've often felt like extending the discourse: "No no, Tolstoy doesn't mean that at all!"

I didn't underline textbooks or books I was reading for a class, but I make little bracket marks in the margins--saved me a lot of effort in underlining.

My copy of Slaughterhouse Five came from a used book store, and the person really marked it up. At the passage where Vonnegut imagined warfare going in reverse--the bombs flying up from the cities and going back in to the planes, etc., whoever had it before me wrote in the margins: "wouldn't this be WONDERFUL???" I groaned out loud.

$100 bills, used condoms, kitchen appliances, fresh fruits: all these items turned out to be very impractical at some level for marking passages in books.

That's why I use paper bookmarks.

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A Serradayres (Ribatejo) Reserva 2002 wine label.


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I don't use a bookmark. I either remember the page number or flip through until I find where I was at.

I tend to mark my place by way of a bookmark or train ticket.

However, I mark my passage through a book via a grubby parade of assorted food mess - Milo stains, crisp debris, soup splashes and so on - with accompanying fingerprints.
I'm a messy reader, even when I try not to be.

Folding, however, is disgusting.