Bookmarks for Paper books, what is your style?

First of all, I admit that paper books are not very appreciated nowadays when more and more people are shifting to electronic books. However, in my own opinion, I still love paper books the best. If you’re not a fan of paper books but a little curious, hang in here and enjoy the post with me. It’s not a big deal, just my tiny opinion on bookmarking.

(Picture source: http://en.wikipedia.org)

I remember when I first time got into paper books, I never thought about using a bookmark. As many people, I folded a page when I wanted to stop. At that time, all the books on my shelf were only for me; I bought and owned them all. On my mind, I supposed that I would be rarely touching those books again, it was not a big problem to fold some pages of them anyway.

Unfortunately, I still kept doing that even after I moved to another country where I borrowed books from a public library instead of buying them all. Simply I thought just because it was so fast, easy and convenient to do so. I would keep doing that if there was not a sudden day I recognized that I should stop. Around almost one year ago when I was reading Dilbert series, I fell asleep and just by accident I lay on the cover page the whole time. When I was up, I looked at the book and it made me so sad. The entire cover page was so pretty just one hour before and then got a big folding line in the middle. And if the book really had had the feelings, I would have left the permanent scar in its life. It made me feel so bad when I compared my mistake with someone’s which hurt and left permanent scar in someone’s life. To return the book, usually I could just drop it into a cabinet in front of the library. However, that time I walked inside the library and gave it directly to the librarian. Although he didn’t say anything about that big scar but I couldn’t forget it myself. Maybe just because many people made the same scars like that before so that the librarian just didn’t mind anymore. I felt guilty.

When I got home, I determined to change it asap. I started looking for a bookmark which was from anything close by I could grasp and stopped folding a page. I remember going to big accessory stores a couple of times to invest a cool bookmark. However at the end, I didn’t satisfy with any available-made one. They were either ugly or expensive. Day by day, I just forgot about it. Without paying any attention, I just collected any piece of papers or even a mask [an unused one ] to bookmark my pages as my hobby.

Finally, I just didn’t mind whatever the bookmark was made from anymore. Its only usage is to hold a point so that I can return the next time. It was such a small habit to build up but the value is big at the end to me. I feel respectful and appreciated more and more to books by keeping them mint.

What do you think when you see these marks in a book? [click on the picture to see it larger]

(A lot of folded pages)

It would be fine to me before but I’m so annoyed now to see those marks. Books are the world achievements and those marks are like permanent scars to the world achievements suddenly made by the neglectfulness.

I’m not coming up with writing this post if I don’t see a lot of those scars from the book I’m reading. Yes I’m hurt to see them. If I can put a request for the world, for now, I would say “Please use a bookmark instead of folding a book page.”

I’m glad that I just did the wrong thing with only one book I’m not the owner, luckily though. You don’t really need an elegant bookmark like the one in the picture I linked from Wikipedia above, but please just remind yourself to stop hurting books. You can even come up with some cheap bookmarks like mine here. Books open the door so that you can get into the powerful world, therefore, just don’t thank them by hurting them.

(My cheap bookmark collection - Be noted all the names/texts on those papers do not mean anything to support this post)

(And here are some fancy bookmarks from $1 store   - they're actually stickers )