As we become conscious of the many hearts, minds, and hands it took for a book's production and dissemination, the community* appears via the book. In this reality, we should consider ourselves more as "users" of the book as opposed to "readers," as the bibliographic scholar Sarah Werner states in her book Studying Early Printed Books. While this alchemical process of turning rags or pulp into connections and imagined environments can be a welcome and beautiful kind of magic, in reality, the book is an object and one with many creators, craftspeople, and handlers (the historical study of the book as object is called bibliography). The book - its paper, its design, its entire history - can disappear as the mechanical process of turning a page becomes a nearly unconscious activity, like breathing or riding a bike. Books can also connect us with the creator, sometimes so deeply that we feel as if we are in direct communication with them. Together this collection of lost treasures offers a glimpse into other readers' lives that they never intended for us to see.Books can transport you and provoke you.
Sure, there are actual bookmarks, but there are also pictures and ticket stubs, old recipes and notes, valentines, unsent letters, four-leaf clovers, and various sordid, heartbreaking, and bizarre keepsakes. Forgotten Bookmarks is a scrapbook of Popek's most interesting finds. By night, he's the voyeuristic force behind where he shares the weird objects he has found among the stacks at his store. But what becomes of those forgotten bookmarks? What stories could they tell? By day, Michael Popek works in his family's used bookstore. Eventually the book finds its way into the world-a library, a flea market, other people's bookshelves, or to a used bookstore. It could be a train ticket, a letter, an advertisement, a photograph, or a four-leaf clover. It's happened to all of us: we're reading a book, something interrupts us, and we grab the closest thing at hand to mark our spot.
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