The Book of Bookmarks : a short essay on the power of reading

Twenty bookmarks decorated with inspirational quotes about reading, arranged in a pull out book.

Often, when we need to mark where we’ve got to in a book, we bend back the page or reach for an old receipt, but there’s a particular pleasure in having a robust and elegant bookmark to hand. Here are twenty bookmarks, unusually assembled into a small pull-out ‘book’ that simultaneously offers, across its surfaces, an essay on the business of reading: why we do it, what the best books do for us, and how literature might change our lives. This book of bookmarks prompts small, artful occasions when, at the start or end of a reading session, we can pause to consider the power of books and their vital place in our lives. Excerpts Include: “The moment we cry in a book is often not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected. We cry about our hopes”“One kind of good book leaves us asking: how did the author know that about me? By looking particularly deeply into their own secrets, authors simultaneously guess everyone else’s”“The best books put their finger on emotions that we recognise as deeply our own, but could never have formulated on our own.”“Books are like people; we meet many but fall in love very seldom. Perhaps only ten books will ever truly mark us. We shouldn’t feel ashamed of abandoning the ones that don’t work for us”