For bookmarks, I like using markers of a time and place: bus, train, and plane tickets; cinema or concert tickets; significant receipts, especially from holidays; appointment cards; other people’s business cards, just after I met them.
After finishing the book, I leave the marker in the book for my future self to discover, years later, and to remember the circumstance of the journey or meeting. Sometimes fondly, sometimes not at all.
Ah, bookmarcheology. I do the same thing, or at least I did until I stopped reading physical books.
I haven’t got to that point yet; I only read technical e-books on my iPad, and I don’t have a Kindle (yet). I’m already feeling anticipatory nostalgia for the time when I’ll look back on this kind of thing, and feel regret for not doing it any more.
You know, it would be fun to find a way to tie the iPad camera to the eBook annotation functionality that most readers have. “You’ve started a new chapter: quick, take a photo of whatever’s in front of you!”
A few months ago, picked up a book I hadn’t opened in years. Found inside the last bookmark I’d used – a postcard-sized piece of heavy parchment, and on it, in my great-grandmother’s shaky script, a smiley face and a ‘happy birthday’ wish.