Wednesday Word ~ placeholder (and a book)

Forgotten Bookmarks: A Bookseller's Collection of Odd Things Lost Between the Pages ~ by Michael Popek, 2011, scrapbook, 192 pages

It's happened to all of us:  we're reading a book, something interrupts us, and we grab the closest thing at hand to mark our spot.  It could be a train ticket, a letter, an advertisement, a photograph, or a four-leaf clover.  Eventually the book finds its way into the world — a library, a flea market, other people's bookshelves, or to a used bookstore.  But what becomes of those forgotten bookmarks?  What stories could they tell?

By day, Michael Popek works in his family's used bookstore.  By night, he's the voyeuristic force behind www.forgottenbookmarks.com, where he shares the weird objects he has found among the stacks at his store.

Forgotten Bookmarks is a scrapbook of Popek's most interesting finds.  Sure, there are actual bookmarks, but there are also pictures and ticket stubs, old recipes and notes, valentines, unsent letters, four-leaf clovers, and various sordid, heartbreaking, and bizarre keepsakes.  Together this collection of lost treasures offers a glimpse into other readers' lives that they never intended for us to see.

Word of the Day

place·​hold·​er ˈplās-ˌhōl-dər = something that occupies the position or place of another thing.  Example:  "I couldn't find my bookmark, so I put a coaster in my book as a placeholder."

The book arrived this morning (a day early), and I'm ready to start reading it.