If you dog-ear the pages, I will dog-ear your ears …

They give you a receipt when you buy a book and even when you borrow one from the library, so really there's no excuse for dog-earing pages.

It goes without saying that you should never use the pages of a book itself to mark a page. Everyone has done it at some hurried moment, but I try, if at all possible, to preserve my books’ pages and find at least something to mark the page.

Bookmarks come looking like almost anything these days.

Usually when I’m reading, I mark my page with whatever scrap of paper happens to be handy when I’m finished with the first chapter (or wherever I stop first). But lately, I’ve begun a new little tradition: buying bookmarks in places I’ve visited or even using the ones I’ve been given as gifts. Here’s a show of some of my favorite types:

This is truly sentimental, and because its inscription is in French, I like to put it into my French-language books.

This bookmark was given to me by my high school French teacher. The quote on the bookmark reads, "The heart has reasons that reason knows not."

This one’s more of a reminder of a lovely place, though its thick, high-quality paper makes it a good marker.

This one I bought at a paper store in Venice. The picture is of the Bridge of Sighs, a bridge that transported prisoners to their cells. The sighs figure in because the men would see a last glimpse of Venice through the window and sigh ...

This one’s a reminder of a beautiful piece of artwork.

This one I bought in Paris as a souvenir of the Musée Nationale de Gustave-Moreau, a small museum named after the artist whose works are displayed. The image on the bookmark is that of "Salome dancing before Herod."

I love dragonflies, so I adore this one. Being made of metal, it has a fine feel to it, though it can be a bit slippery.

This one was a gift and came from one of the Smithsonian Museums in Washington, D.C.

This one has a very strong grip, but i have to be careful of my pages when I clip it on.

Also a gift, this is one of my more curious bookmarks and was bought in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The bookmark itself is magnetic. The photo on the front is a black-and-white of the Flatiron Building in NYC.

This week, tune in for a review of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as well as a review of the movie Everything is Illuminated. (I review this book earlier, if you’ll remember.) Have a lovely Sunday!