Casual

...Frank McCourt, Kathryn Harrison, and Dave Eggers should remember this is the culmination, not the beginning, of a literary career...

...I used it in middle school when my friends and I were going through a Stephen King phase...

...They tend to reflect the character of the bookstore itself...

...Shaman Drum did not meet this simple requirement, since its high-altitude spiritual pretensions were matched by its lofty prices...

...If ever, God forbid, "e-books" become the norm, what will happen to the bookmark...

...Meow, Kevin!] The stores in my college town, Ann Arbor, also displayed their unique esprit in their giveaway bookmarks...

...In my experience, fancy store-bought bookmarks almost always go unused...

...Like the guide on a long journey, a good bookmark keeps you from losing your way, gently chides you for your lack of progress, and brings you cheer by reminding you how far you've come...

...But Shaman Drum—a smug, leftist college-town bookstore whose "salesper-syns" viewed razors, combs, and deodorant as oppressive tools of The Man—aimed a bit higher...

...Its bookmarks offer inane "staff favorites" commentaries, updated regularly...

...The figures on the drumhead symbolize spiritual and earthly phenomena, the means by which the shaman is able to establish contact with the gods...

...Borders offers nice ones—sturdy, I '. well-sized, with attractive Art Deco designs...

...Perhaps the only bought bookmark I've ever used has Garfield the cat pointing toward the page and asking: "Does your mother know you're reading this stuff...

...Drums are used almost universally in shamanic rituals to signal a transition from one state of consciousness to another...

...I would glide through the gilded lobby with my Milk Duds, slip into the dark theater, and time-travel back to the 1940s—it was like seeing the movies when they were first released...

...In this multimedia, bibliophobic age, the word "bookmark" is likely to remind a young whippersnapper of all the websites for porn and copyright-infringing music-sharing he has "bookmarked" on his Web browser, rather than of some years-old wedding invitation keeping his place in a copy of Anna Karenina...

...Last summer at Monticello, inspired by Jefferson's immense personal library, I bought a slick bookmark with a laminated Jefferson 29-cent stamp and a little gold-plated book dangling on a rich blue tassel...

...The pure textbook-and-sweatshirt peddlers featured bookmarks with school spirit—the football team's schedule was printed on them in the Michigan colors, maize and blue...

...In my King James Bible, I use a handsome freebie from the National Cathedral gift shop showing one of the cathedral's breathtaking stained glass windows...

...Finding that stub in the book brought pleasant memories flooding back...

...While flipping through an old textbook recently, I found a ticket stub from the Michigan Theater, a beautiful 1920s movie palace in Ann Arbor restored to its original, baroque glory...

...LEE BOCKHORN...

...For the true bibliophile, the choice of a bookmark is almost as important as the choice of the book itself...

...You don't embark upon The Brothers Kara-mazov or Middlemarch without a bookmark that's up to the task...

...I believe a good bookshop is a place where I can buy good books at reasonable rates...

...Someone must, but for my part I'm rarely tempted...

...Not bad, for a little piece of paper...

...The best bookmarks, however, are always items appropriated for the purpose...

...Here's the twaddle on the reverse of a Shaman Drum bookmark: The design on the front . . . ornaments the skin of a Minusinsk Tatar shaman's drum...

...So I bought my Nicomachean Ethics at the evil, soulless Borders down the street...

...It helps if the bookmark somehow matches your book's subject...

...Hmm...

...I'd be sorry to lose it...

...When it wasn't showing new art-house trash, the theater ran classics like Casablanca, Top Hat, and Citizen Kane...

...We believe a good bookshop is another way of facilitating a change of consciousness...

...I think I last saw it collecting dust on my dining table...

...My library has become a kind of substitute scrapbook, safekeeping mementos: concert, movie, and sports tickets, postcards from friends visiting exotic locales, and old photos, all tucked away between the pages, awaiting rediscovery...

...Casual MARK MY WORDS Who, I found myself wondering the other afternoon in the checkout line at Borders, ever actually pays money for one of those bookmarks full of coo-inducing saucer-eyed kittens or saccharine poetry...

...Kevin," for example, recommends The Autobiography of Mark Twain: This is a true memoir, if only because it was written expressly to be published and read AFTER the author's death...

...The free, utilitarian bookmarks found beside bookstore cash registers, of course, are another matter...

...But some stores get a little too ambitious, like Kramerbooks, a books-and-coffee joint here in Washington...