 All Kinds of BookmarksbyLauren Roberts
Get librarians or used booksellers together and one of the subjects will undoubtedly be that of things found in books. Impromptu bookmarks as it were. Some are bookmarks, made for the purpose of holding one’s place in a book. But when an actual bookmark is not available, people are apt to use just about anything as these two groups of professionals know all too well. Case in point is a recent cartoon from Unshelved, the cartoon for librarians:
Now this may seem gross and it is ,but it is an unfortunate truth as well. Laine Farley, my co-writer, has discussed bacon bookmarks (using real bacon) and has gotten a lot of responses but no librarians have, as far as she knows, have actually discovered a piece of bacon. It seems to be one of those urban legends. But . . . there are things used as bookmarks that have been discovered that are also weird, funny, sad, just plain odd, crazy, personal, beautiful, old, new. When you hear about some of these you have to wonder who the people were that thought to use a particular object to save their place. For several years I volunteered at our local Planned Parenthood annual book sale’s sorting site. This is where the initial sorting of all donations took place, and it was hard and often filthy work. Any bookmarks found were saved in a box and used to make a collage. (Sadly, this was prior to the start of my interest in collecting and so I never took but an occasional one.) But my most memorable find was in a book of poetry whose title I have forgotten: two $20 bills. They were still crisp and clean, tucked neatly in the middle of the book where they had been for god knows how long. What most surprised me was that someone would use two bills. Why two? Was one not enough? Had someone been swiping money from another’s wallet or purse and been interrupted before being able to pocket it. Was this book the only place to “hide” the evidence? Or had it perhaps been intended as a surprise gift from one spouse to another, only to be discarded with the unwanted book? Another odd bookmark is one I’ve mentioned before. In fact, it was the subject of my first piece for this column: It was the hair that did it. It is the only bookmark I own that stays in the book and the only one made of hair. But that experience has grown into a collection of more than 300 bookmarks. That “bookmark” today is the star of my antique coffee table, an oversized square design of, I’d guess the early twentieth century. Painted with cream, gold, a soft green, and light blues, it has three levels. The top is glass. The second, about six inches below the top, is also glass that is encased in glass sides, but which opens at two ends. The third is a drawer lined in rich blue-green felt. Two round painted handles on each side allow you to pull the drawer from either end. (This drawer actually sits on the bottom level, which has legs and a carved bottom below it.) Because the drawer is protected, I keep my precious three-dimensional bookmarks in it and where there is room, a few paper, silk and leather ones. They surround The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, which is open to pages 55-56, showing off that “first” bookmark. But I am not the only one to collect things in books that have served as bookmarks. A blog called Forgotten Bookmarks tells of the discoveries by Michael who works at his family’s (now his) rare and used bookshop. “In a typical day of sorting,” he writes on the FAQ page, “I can go through five or six hundred books. If I’m lucky, I’ll find five bookmarks of real interest.” Pressed leaves are his most common find; the most unusual was as suicide note from the 1930s (though he declined to write about that). He hasn’t found hair (though he did find a Sensation Hair Net), but money has come up twice. One was just a novelty, but the other was actual currency from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, circa 1939-45. What should one make of the circular saw he found in a book titled Inside Every Woman. The mind boggles. You might think that real bookmarks are scarce, and they are. Nine of his twenty-seven categories have more including photos (82), miscellaneous (64), notes (35), and letters (27). Michael is a fun and interesting guy, and if I lived near him I’d be visiting his bookshop often. Since I don’t I check in here regularly. On LibraryThing, a discussion for Folio Society devotees began a discussion of bookmarks on Saturday. Message #42 notes: “I have a length of narrow satin ribbon, from which I cut a six to seven inch strip whenever required. It's cheap and there is no chance of it causing any damage to the book. The only thing I have to take care about is that it doesn't protrude enough to engage the interest of my namesake. I saw him eying up my LE Moby Dick the other night as I hadn't tucked the sewn-in marker between the pages - I just caught him in time, otherwise I may have had to change my name to ‘TheLateHuxleyTheCat.’ ” One respondent noted that the sewn-in ribbon bookmarks in Easton Press books were likely to cause long-term damage and advised that “acid free, color-fast paper/card stock” was best. Also on LT a thread titled “Things Found in a Used Book” people shared that, among other items, they found a packet of flower seeds, $120 in cash (!), a dead bug, handwritten recipes, a Civil War soldier’s letter, pressed marijuana leaves, a rasher of dried bacon, and photos of naked people. Another good discussion is “What Bookmark Are You Using?” where some people have bravely admitted to having a “hot guy” one (gifted to her by her husband) and a red pen because “the cats have taken to stealing the pens from me so the only way I can keep them safe is to hide them in the book I'm reading.” In LT’s Bookmarks discussion, I found listed paint sample cards, postcards, Post Its, movie stubs, and homemade book thongs, though it was disturbing to read that so many simply felt dog-earing pages was an appropriate form of bookmarking. And in Bookmarks—Describe the One You’re Currently Using, someone actually admits to using a paper clip! Bookmarks—What Do You Currently Use (yes, it’s a different discussion) has people discussing the use of some of the above plus toilet paper, airline boarding passes, receipts, and old punch cards. In Bookmarks—Most Unusual, someone used a hospital bracelet she cut off when she arrived home after surgery. Someone else used “a drop of perfume.” And toast with jam was highly recommended. Things Found in Books is another online site devoted to—what else?—ersatz bookmarks. What’s interesting about this site is that it is created by people all over the world who take pictures of what they find and submit them. Who’s behind it? “I’m just this guy, you know,” he says. On this page, there is an interesting list by various people of what they’ve found. One person notes: “Most recently, in a 1930's copy of a book called Trees of Michigan, a pressed leaf from every tree mentioned.” There was also a “half-smoked joint in the pages of a second hand copy of Valley of the Dolls.” But the saddest was this: “As a child I used to look through books around the house and often find ‘I’m gonna divorce you and leave you’ letters my mother had drafted over the past 15 years she'd been married to my father. Not a good thing for a child to find!!!” The blog Inside Books has a “Bookmark of the Week” which doesn’t necessarily antique, valuable or odd bookmarks but just bookmarks in general. Real bookmarks. But it’s a nice look at the blogger’s growing collection. AbeBooks, the online used and rare bookselling organization with its own community, once wrote about things found in books. It will make you weak at the knees—even if you are not a sports fan—to learn about the Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card in addition to all the other fun stuff their buyers and sellers have found. D.J. MacAdam wrote an essay about finding in one of his books, John Comfort Fillmore's Pianoforte Music: Its History, With Biographical Sketches and Critical Estimates of Its Greatest Masters, a pile of yellowed newspaper clippings that has a fascinating story behind it. Finally, the lovely Bibliophemera blog focuses on things found in his books (he’s a book dealer). The latest (as of this writing) are postcards from a medical and scientific book publisher to Dr. Henry M. Hurd at the Asylum for the Insane in Pontiac, Michigan. But there’s lots more, and it’s worth your time to read back into the archives of this fantastic place. As for toenail clippings, yes, librarians have found those as well as a real bacon bookmark. What else? Well, let’s look at what was also found! The thing about bookmarks is that just about anything will be used as a bookmark, even things most of us wouldn’t even consider. Sad, funny, gross, unbelievable, beautiful, memorable. Things to mark your place in a book can be any of these. And in some odd way they can all be called “bookmarks.”
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