photo credit: applejan

Case against bookmarks is almost certainly language too strong for this but brief thought I had several days ago.

We use bookmarks to remember where we left off reading a book. But shouldn’t the reading be so stimulating that we remember exactly where we left off and therefore have no need for a bookmark? Bookmarks seem to aid in the task of “working” one’s way through a book instead of enjoying the material. For example, any student knows the feeling of having a required reading which they are not looking forward to. The material is hardly stimulating and the reading proves rather onerous. It’s burdensome! But we “work” through it because it’s required, perhaps taking breaks periodically to do something more interesting (or from going crazy) so we slide in a bookmark to remember exactly where we left off in order to safeguard against reading the same (burdensome) material twice. Reading it once was bad enough.

But it’s not only with these kinds of books that we use bookmarks, we use them all the time with books of all sorts. Harry Potter. Bible (ribbon bookmark). Such-and-such theology. So-and-so’s novel. All over the place. We should ask ourselves, Is my reading really worth my time if I need a bookmark? If the answer is no, then we should adjust how we read to make it worth the while. If the answer is yes, maybe you’re just reading a fortified man-book that’s rocking your world and a bookmark’s understandable. If we don’t care, we should ask if we’re just reading for the sake of reading or for the privilege of being able to say, “I read that book.” You may have read it, but did you read it? Did you enjoy it? It’s easy to slip into reading for the sake of reading and thereby need a bookmark to remember where we left off “reading.”

But what if we could close a book, walk away, come back later, and remember right where we left off? That’s a great feeling! Now we’re reading! I’ve recently tried simply remembering the page number (which I guess is a mental bookmark, but still guards against forgetting what I was reading). If we do forget the page number, it shouldn’t take too long to get at least in the ballpark of where we left off and after skimming, find where we left off. If we don’t remember reading a section, but think we did, we probably didn’t. Read it again for the first time!

Respond

Do you use a bookmark? How do you remember where you left off? Is it reasonable to eschew bookmarks? I think so. It seems the less we test our memories the less we’ll get out of them.