A pen, a post-it, an old receipt, a business card, a dog-eared page, a metal feather, a magnetic clip. What do all these things have in common? They can all reasonably serve as a bookmark. Whether you’re done reading for the night, saving a spot to return to later, or reluctantly leaving in the middle of a scene to do something pressing, bookmarks are the MVP of reading.
Now, I urge you to hear me out, because while bookmarks might be an afterthought in the world of reading to some people, they’re a priority to others. Earlier this year, I was perusing my stash of bookmarks for one that I thought would work nicely with the book I was reading, Normal People by Sally Rooney. I could not start the book before assigning it a bookmark, but I wanted it to match the colours of the cover. I was delaying my reading for the sake of searching for something to later mark my reading with. It occurred to me how ridiculous it was that I may not be able to read this book if I could not find a suitable page marker and, unsurprisingly, made me question my behaviour.
Excuse me if I sound like I’m trying to be quirky or different, but when you’re bored and curious enough, you’ll do anything. So, what I did in this situation was abandon my search for a bookmark and attempt to live without one. Was I successful? Yes and no. Whilst it was quite obviously less of a big deal than I thought it would be, it did not reverse my desire to slip a bookmark between the pages whenever I put my book down. Instead, I was alternating between devouring the book fast enough that I did not need to mark my page and abandoning it like a tent in the wild on my desk, refusing to close it and lose my place.
Without a dedicated bookmark, there are only a few options. Dog-ear the page (criminal), rely on your memory to recall the last page you read (impossible, obviously), or lose your place altogether and have to flick through until you recognise somewhere you might have been (infuriating). I recall an English teacher urging us to familiarise ourselves with important parts of a book so we might develop muscle memory to draw upon during open-book exams, but with personal reading, not using bookmarks feels sacrilege. You have no little adornment for your book, nothing to hide between the pages and find the next time you revisit it, and—even worse—nothing to do the work of remembering exactly where you were on your behalf.
Despite how it may seem, I’m not trying to suggest that not using a bookmark is a terrible thing for everyone, just for me. If you read a lot of library books, I can see how a need to prevent sending your bookmarks back with them could prevent you from wanting to use them in the first place. Bookmarks can easily fall from between pages and end up lost forever or crumpled at the bottom of a bag and putting money and effort into collecting them or even making them yourself can seem pointless. For me, however, not using a bookmark would be a last resort, since there are other things you can use like old index cards or a piece of paper, rather than nothing.
With a bookmark, I never lose my page and I have something potentially pretty to look at or twirl between my fingers when my mind wanders from the pages I’m supposed to be reading. Sometimes, you get bookmarks for free when you buy books, and anything can be a bookmark, so I struggle to see the appeal of not using them at all.
I have concluded that I prefer and enjoy using bookmarks, but I understand that they aren’t essential for everyone and that there are plenty of ways to mark a page. I will remain fascinated by people that don’t use bookmarks because I have discovered I could not live without them. They transform the act of remembering your place into something passive so that you can focus entirely on the world being created by the author, not on questioning if you’ve read something already. Even though I suggested it was criminal earlier in the post, if a book belongs to you, dog-earing the corners rather than using a bookmark is also acceptable, but only in that case, because at least then you’ll know where you were without a dedicated bookmark.
I’d love to know how you feel about bookmarks. Are you passionately committed to them, or do they rarely cross your mind?
Read 'N Riot 