Book Review: Forgotten Bookmarks by Michael Popek

Forgotten Bookmarks: A Bookseller’s Collection of Odd Things Lost Between the Pages
by Michael Popek (002 Pop)

Working in a library, we tend to see a lot of…unusual…things left behind in books that are returned to the libraries. Over the years, we’ve even occasionally had displays put up highlighting the odd bookmarks that customers have neglected to reclaims — from the commonplace (receipts, scrap paper, photos, etc.) to the hard-to-explain (a piece of bacon).

Therefore, the title of this slim volume immediately resonated with me. Forgotten Bookmarks is, as the title suggests, a celebration of the odd things left behind in books that were handled by author Michael Popek in his full-time job as an antiquarian book dealer. He breaks the types of “left behind” objects into broad categories, then shows photographs of the object in question (sometimes with either a blown-up image to illustrate it more clearly, and sometimes with a transcription of the text if it’s hard to read — handwritten notes, etc.), although with a photo of the book the “bookmark” was found within. There is very little explanatory text — Popek usually lets the “lost bookmark” speak for itself.

This is a fun, quirky little read, which should especially appeal to book lovers — those who prefer to hold a physical book in their hands over the more clinical experience of reading e-books. A little goes a long way however — I think I would have enjoyed this a bit more if I’d spread it out over more time, reading just a few entries at a time. Instead, I read it pretty much in a single sitting, and the “lost bookmarks” tended to all sort of blur together.

And, honestly, though many of the remnants in this volume, particularly those which included handwritten notes, were heart-warming, on the “weird” end of the spectrum, I’ve seen far weirder things left in library books that Popek chronicles in his bookseller experience.

[ official Forgotten Bookmarks and author website ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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