If you need a bookmark to remember where you are in a book…

That’s fine.

I enjoyed a question about bookmarks in a recent Advice from the Stacks post. Traci wrote about her own bookmark practices in her response, and it made me think of an anecdote about my great-grandfather Knowlton. I never met him, but he’s a legendary character in our family stories, and probably the most often cited of his sayings is, “if you need a bookmark to remember where you are in a book, you need to start over.” He felt so strongly about this that he would go around removing bookmarks he found in books, even strangers’ books. I told this story in the Discord for The Stacks Podcast and one person replied, “I would challenge him to a duel if he did that to me!”

No one in my family ever removed a bookmark from my books, but the story was such lore that as a child I was vehemently anti-bookmark. Great-grandfather did have a point! I was a very fast reader, often finishing things in a single sitting, so it wasn’t as much of an issue for me at the time. But when I did need to stop, I would memorize the page number.

Much like my prescriptivist tendencies, my view about bookmarks has relaxed with time - and now I use them - but I still memorize the page number or take a mental picture of how far in I am, and what the page layout looks like. If I’m ever haunted by the bookmark-removing ghost of my great-grandfather, I’ll be okay.

I am a somewhat chaotic bookmark user. If I’m on my game, I will use an actual bookmark, but I will also use paper scraps, library hold slips/checkout receipts, receipts in general, junk mail, a writing implement, a magazine, a piece of yarn, etc. If I’m not too far into the book, I will use the flap of the book jacket - incidentally, I learned from the same conversation on Discord that whether you remove or keep the book jacket on when reading is a very controversial decision, and that friendships have been lost over using the flaps as bookmarks. (I keep the jacket on, unless it’s particularly flimsy or slick.) But I won’t use it in a way that distorts the flap - I’m not a monster! 

I keep a collection of bookmarks in my nightstand, and I tend to value bookstore bookmarks the most, especially if they are worn. I even have a few worn bookmarks from stores I haven’t even been to, gifted to me in a family used book swap holiday tradition. I also try to match bookmarks to books. I have a bookmark that came with a Powell’s special edition of Tommy Orange’s There, There, and it was designed by an indigenous artist. Recently, I’ve read a few things by indigenous authors and looked for that bookmark specifically. I also like to match store bookmarks to the books purchased from them, if that’s an option. Sometimes stores have a particularly pretty bookmark, like Big Story Bookstore in Bend, and that gets put in heavy rotation.

Have you ever thought about bookmarks, or are you a normal person?

An appreciation

I am not a prestige television person, and I am almost always way behind on shows and movies, but I actually watched the first season of Reservation Dogs as it aired. We had Hulu with live TV at that time because I was severely depressed and one of the only things that would occupy my brain was watching Say Yes to the Dress (NYC only, the show isn’t a show without Pnina Tornai dresses). See? Not a prestige television person.

I don’t have great recall from that period, and I lost a lot of the plot of Reservation Dogs - if I followed it at all - because my brain was in such a fog, but what did come through was emotion. When I couldn’t feel anything, I could feel that show.

My head is clear enough now that I can recount all three seasons, but I’m not going to do that because I want you to watch it. At times it is incredibly sad and then suddenly hilarious (see the finale of season two for a prime example of that). Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s absurd. The characters are fantastic, the plots are inventive and fascinating, and the sense of family and community is so real you can feel it - even if your brain is being an asshole.

You don’t have to take my word for it, by the way - if you want the Gray Lady’s opinion on the last season (spoilers included), here it is. This show being snubbed by the Emmys this year is flat out ridiculous.

Miscellany

A non-comprehensive list of my dog Pippin’s nicknames: Pip, Pippi, Pipperino, Pip Pup, Bud, Bud Bud, Buddy, Pipster, Bumblebee, Dude, Duder, The Dude, Dudeski, P-Man, Fool of a Took, Fool, Damn Fool, Pipperoni, Mr. Toe Beans

A playlist for doing CPR, from an actual hospital: