The Art of the Bookmark...Part One

I recently was doing some spring cleaning here at the store and came across two bags of bookmarks another bookseller had collected. The intent originally was for me and my friend to do a large collage. It never happened. I happened to rediscover these at the moment that I had submitted new art work, done by C., a bookseller and artist in residence here at Green Apple.

(as seen below) So I thought I would share some old Green Apple Bookmarks and some from all over. Going through them was a little depressing as I saw all the bookstores that have closed over the years. So let us remember our fallen comrades with the art they put in the pages of your books...

One of my all-time favorites.
This was our bookmark for many years, maybe even a couple decades as we were really excited to be on that "World Wide Web" everyone is talking about.
Here is an old one from our friend across the country, one of the most famous of the Independent Bookstores, N.Y.'s The Strand Bookstore. I'm not sure what year this was, they still boasted their "8 Miles of Books", but they stay open much later these days.
This is one of the classier bookmarks from the now extinct Pickwick Book Shops that once were scattered throughout the greater L.A. area. A nice little die-cut that you can kind of make out in this picture so that your bookmark does not slip out.
(the L.A. area should take advantage of their independent's that are out there and great: Skylight Books, Book Soup, and Others.)

And R.I.P. Blair Fuller.

Swedish duos

Quiz time!

One of the following sexy, pouty-lipped Swedish duos are the band Roxette. The other are "Lars Kepler," author of the crime bestseller The Hypnotist. Care to guess which is which?

A whale of a dilemma

Should I be unfaithful to this "definitive text"?

I'm about to begin Moby-Dick again and though the trusty Penguin Classics edition I've underlined, annotated, and dog-eared pretty heavily through the course of two previous readings has become a sentimental object, I'm thinking it might be time to invest in a new edition, one whose yellowing margins are free of the embarrassing penciled in thoughts of my younger selves.

But I'm not sure. You can learn a lot about yourself by returning to a book you've read before. Will those passages that resonated previously affect me the same way now? Will I agree with my assessments of a character or plot development? And, especially important in the case of a book as weird and patchwork as Moby-Dick, will I remember which chapters I can skip?

On the other hand, there are benefits to approaching a familiar book by a new route. I'd be seeing Moby-Dick free of former prejudices and might, by getting my hands on a fresh copy, pull the book out from under the layers of thoughts I've added to my sturdy Penguin Classics copy.

I'm undecided. Should I remain faithful to a my copy, with its cracked spine and all of its history, or is straying in this case morally acceptable? Maybe you can help me decide.

In the meantime, here's a collection of Moby-Dick cover art, some old, some new, some imaginary: