From: spb0457@rigel.tamu.edu (SubGenius)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Buried Treasure -or- So, whaddaya use for bookmarks?
Date: 24 Jan 1993 18:54 CST
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: rigel.tamu.edu
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    




I spent yesterday puttering around used books stores and bars, so when
I awoke this morning I had a couple piles of books that needed to be sorted 
out and shelved (as it turned out, my haul this time was about three feet
of shelfspace worth of books), and a mild headache.

In sorting out where to put these newly aquired volumes--the paperbacks and
run-of-the-mill trade editions and hardcovers go on the railing by the
staircase (the expedient of using the railing as bookspace nets me a nice
eleven or twelve feet of much-needed shelf space), hardcovers
by my favourite writers make it onto real bookshelves while my reasonably
valuable, out-of-print, first edition or hard-to-find books have reserved
space on a couple shelves in my bedroom.

In sorting out what to move where, I wound up looking right along the
aformentioned railing with the tops of the books at eye-level and noticed
that, instead of a smooth plane of booktops I instead saw a tangled lawn
of the folded, spindled and mutilated top ends of bookmarks.  I've got this 
bad habit (well, several.  but I'm just admitting to one of them here)--I
tend to leave bookmarks in books after I'm done reading them.  From his
perch atop one of the volumes of Solzhenitsyn's _The Gulag Archipelago_
an inch-tall portrait of a bushy-eyebrow'd and mustache'd Sam Clements
smirked at me.  `Son,' sez the micro-Twain, `Why don't you mow the lawn?'

So I go down the row, picking out all the bookmarks.  When I'm done I have:

    --- A half-dozen of the above-mentioned Half-Price Books
	20th Anniversary bookmarks, along with a dozen or so
	of the various other varieties of H.P.B. bookmarks.

    --- A bunch of unopened correspondence with ancient
	postmarks from a (veritable) plethora of companys
	seeking my patronage.

    --- A couple dollar bills and other notes of negotiable currency.

    --- My voter registration card.

    --- Numerous receipts from bookstores, averaging about five and a
	half inches apiece.

    --- A couple of those little envelopes that guitar strings come in
	(the paper ones for the individual strings, not the plastic
         blast-proof baggie the paper envelopes come in).

    --- A peeled-off beer label.

    --- A couple business cards.

    --- A computer diskette with a mess 'o AutoCad files on it.

    --- Some personal notes (top secret, so's I'm afraid I can't discuss
	these.  well, I could, but then I'd have to kill you.  so I'll
	answer any Email requests made by [insert name of your favourite
	goose-stepping r.a.b. fascist here]).

    --- A book of stamps (only three stamps left, but they're recent enough
	to be 29 cent-ers).

    --- The registration for a '79 Datsun 210 (the Urban Assault
	Vehicle) that I used to drive.

    --- A postcard from Dresden, (what was then) East Germany bearing
	a photograph of the ruins of the theatre where _The Tempest_
	was first performed.

    --- A few publisher's announcments.

    --- A hand-drawn map of Houston with instructions to a friend's apartment
	on the reverse side.

    --- Several folded scraps of blank paper.

    --- A couple segments of (unused) bungwad.

    --- A cigarette paper.

    --- A registration card for a toaster (didn't fill it out--register
	commies, not toasters;  you can have my toaster when you pry it
	from my cold, dead fingers, u.s.w)

    --- A newsletter from a radio station I've DJ-ed for for some time.

    --- A couple VAX/VMS, TeX and MACSYMA refcards.

    --- A swatch of cloth.

-and-

    --- A brown feather.



Where this is leading, of course, is to an inquiry as to what, if anything,
anyone else has found her- or himself using to mark her or his place in a
book (and, incidentally, to extract confessions from those villians that
fold over the corner of the page).








Yours etc.,




SubGenius








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