Likewise, the bookmark trail is sometimes the only possible path to retrace your steps. The motion is chaotic (outwardly) and sometimes reminiscent of spinning in place, but it is the only possible path to a result. Any research is like the motion of a dog following a scent. The more markers, the greater the reliance on, or interest in, the ideas bound inside. Like Google tracking backlinks, your trail of bookmarks can testify to how valuable you find the book. If it’ll hold your place, it’s a candidate for inclusion slip it inside and thank yourself later. If a book is a river teeming with ideas, a bookmark is a net for catching them.Īlmost anything will work: cover flaps, Post-It Notes, parking tickets, business cards (one of their few ongoing uses), 3x5 index cards, airplane boarding passes, electricity bills, torn strips of paper, lunch napkins, money, store receipts, quilted squares of bathroom tissue (you can admit it you’re among friends), and of course the branded bookmarks little shops sometimes give out (about which more in a moment). These two work well together, but I want to focus on the simple practice of dropping an item between the leaves to hold your place. I explain why here and invite any and all to adopt the practice even if you’re antsy about inking your pages.īookmarking is another method. One method: writing in our books-an idea that unsettles some but which makes my life and work possible. We require means to catch their insights and benefits before they dart past us like elusive trout. A book is a river of ideas, and no matter how attentive or engaged our reading we’ll never encounter the same river again. Do we think about them at all? And yet our lives and literary pursuits would be much diminished without them. What Augustine first finds by chance he and his friend Alypius can now access by intention.Ĭowen hosts a wonderful podcast, Conversations with Tyler, in which he often asks guests whether a person, place, thing, or idea is overrated or underrated. When Augustine finishes, he says, “I placed my finger or some other marker in the book and closed it.” It’s a small but revealing detail. Many of us have had similar moments, and no doubt most of us dwell upon this portion of the story. Running back, he grabs the volume, opens it at random, and falls upon a passage that immediately salves his troubled spirit. But then he remembers his book! He takes it as a sign. “Take and read.” He first assumes it’s the playful call and response of a game. Finally collapsing in the shade of a nearby fig tree, Augustine sobs.Īt that moment the singsong voice of a child wafts over the garden wall. Not wanting Alypius to see his tears, he wanders off once more, leaving his friend and his book on a bench. The pair find a place to sit far from the house they’re sharing, but Augustine is inconsolable. Thinking to comfort him, Augustine’s friend Alypius follows him outdoors. Distraught, he clutches a book as he goes. In a pivotal scene of his Confessions, Augustine retreats to a garden. Bookmarks sprouting like flowers from their beds.
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