The earlier post about reading rituals made me want to get more specific. I treat my books like shit–I use them as coasters, I stack them and throw them around, break softcover spines–but for some reason I don’t like to dog-ear my pages. It just doesn’t feel right. Do you dog-ear? Do you use the front and back flaps of the jacket cover as a bookmark?
Related Posts
10th Anniversary Flash Fiction Contest!
November 7, 2019
I dog ear and use bookmarks and break spines too but I don’t like anything to mar, scratch, dent, of otherwise affect the cover. I love the smooth surface of a cover. I like the sleek feel. tmi?
Dog-earring drives me nuts! I understand why they work for some, but I’m not strong enough to not see them.
For whatever reason dog-ears continually threaten to break me from the “dream” of reading. If reading is a flowing stream and the reader is the wooden raft, dog-ears are the jutting rocks that say: You are on a raft, not a stream.
I like the metaphor. Yeah, dog ears bring attention to the medium, the mode of travel. Maybe that’s it. I don’t care about the cover, because that’s facing away when I’m doing the most important work (i.e. actually reading).
Ditto on dog-ears damming the flow.
No dogging.
No dog-ears and no bookmarks. Although, when I review a book I use sticky notes to mark off passages I want to return to.
I’ve just gotten over my aversion to spinebreaking. Another 20 years and I’ll be able to dog-ear…
I use magazine subscription cards for bookmarks, and sticky notes for marking places. One time I inadvertently did the reverse, and it really discombobulated my reading.
Hey Erin,
How’d you finally get over spinebreaking? I can’t imagine doing that to a book, mine or anybody else’s.
Mass market paperbacks. Fat ones are tough to keep open if you *don’t* do it. From there, it was a slippery slope.
I’d never do it to anyone else’s book, though. I’d dog-ear my own first, which is saying something.
No problem taking notes right in a book. Sometimes I use two color pens. Love a good bookmark (if you send me a promotional one, like J.A. does with his MLP books, I will keep it). But I do not dog-ear. It leaves a permanent remnant of a temporary pause – which seems like it’d be interesting, but it’s just frustrating.
My wife dog-ears. Sometimes in my books.
“a permanent remnant of a temporary pause”
Well said.
And yikes! What do you say to your wife when she dog-ears in your books?
Old Mets tickets are my favorite bookmarks. It’s useful to be reminded of failure and pain as a means of baring your inner self to the literature that you are immersing yourself in.
I too must admit to an attempt (though I don’t go too far out of my way) to find an “appropriate” bookmark. Right now, for instance, my bedtime book is Gilead, and the bookmark I’m using is this strange little scrap I found with an angel on it.
I hope you share your thoughts on Gilead, your marginalia and whatnot.
I’m actually planning on posting something (kind of) about it later today/tomorrow.
You know, all of this brings to mind “Never Do That to a Book”, an essay in Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. In it, she distinguishes between “courtly” and “carnal” booklovers, “carnal” as those who treat books as “wantonly as desire and pragmatism” dictates, while so-called courtly booklovers are characterized as kid-gloved fusspots.
I’m so happy you said fusspots. But really, that’s a little too binary. Some elements of a book I like to preserve, while others I like to abuse. Also, different books call for different treatment. It’s kind of a protestant, personal relationship with each unique book thing.
As funny as I found Fadiman’s essay, the metaphors are off since I’d like to think that carnality also includes being subtle and delicate and tender.
no dog ears! i use bookmarks. i take the dust jackets off of hardbacks before i read them. even if a books already in heavily used condition i treat it like it’s brand new.
no dog ears. sometimes book marks.
i will remember or re-read. if i cannot remember, it shows i was not really reading to begin with.
Ooo, snap.
not really. i just want to be a more careful reader, though i usually fail & end of re-reading a lot. it’s a flaw in my own reading techniques.