Summer Reading Accessories

Wild West Bookmarks

Did anyone else spend some of their youthful hot summer days in the air conditioned local library, wandering through the aisles of books, fingering the glossy spines and inhaling that soothing bookish library scent? Finding a cool private corner in which to read and daydream? Choosing just the right book, checking it out, selecting a bookmark and putting the story on pause so you could walk back out in the sizzling furnace of summer to secure a Frosty at Wendy’s and resignedly make your way to your comparatively hot home? Forbidding your siblings from entering your room while you finished reading that captivating book, feeling slightly sad late that night or the next morning when the story ended? Anyone?

Times have changed. Over more recent years I have listened to hundreds of audiobooks on my commutes, and I’m thankful for them because I’d never have enough time to read everything. For example, right now I’m listening to Pulitzer Prize winning Ron Chernow’s amazing biography of George Washington on 33 CDs! Recently my dear hubby purchased for me a Kindle and I do love its convenience—especially when traveling by plane (which has been much lately; thus the hiatus in the blog). Compared to computers, laptops, ipads, etc., the Kindle is much easier on the eye and more like a book to me.

But audiobooks, Kindles—these ‘virtual realities’—do lack the smell, the feel, the cover, the literalness and luxury of holding a book. It makes one realize how much complexity, nuance and enjoyment there is in 4D living! Furthermore, there is much to be said of what the medium itself invites from you. There is a charm to listening to excellent storytelling while driving, and a convenience in being able to access virtually a whole library of books while on a plane, but for both mediums there is that subtly sterile feeling of multi-tasking and ‘fitting in’ an enjoyment rather than relaxing and ‘settling in’ to a good book. 

So for those of us who do still read from actual books, I present to you some bookmarks to celebrate that great medium.  Some are strong and dignified, some are snarky. It would be fun to make bookmarks for every genre!

Meanwhile, lets agree to—yes—take our children, our nieces and nephews, our grandchildren, our friends, ourselves to the library for the full 4D adventure before summer’s end!

Q: What were your favorite childhood books and library stories?