The travels of a bookmark

Everytime I go back to the library to hand in a book I do a quick check on some of the books I’ve made bookmarks before to see if they’re checked out or if the bookmark has been moved.

I’m currently at a library computer, I’ve just handed in The Shack and I went to look at the first book I ever did for this project, An Abundance of Katherines, which was checked out last time I was here. And I found it without it’s bookmark.

I wonder what the person who found it thought of it, if it resonated with how they felt reading the book or if they just didn’t care at all. I wonder if removing it was a conscious desicion or if carelessness was the culprit. I hope it’s having a grand adventure :).

When I started this project I was curious as to how the people who find the bookmarks would respond to them. I haven’t heard from anyone who found one and came to this blog to let us know. That’s alright. But the fact that someone took the An Abundance of Katherines-bookmark from the book is a response. Something about the bookmark motivated them to take it. I hope it was a positive reason. What they do with it is up to them. :)

The Shack – William Paul Young

The Shack was a short read for me, but I took a long time to gather my thoughts about it afterwards. It’s a philosophical book, in it a man who’s been through some hard times meets God. Literally. What follows is a book mostly filled with dialogue about the nature of humans and God and how they relate to each other.

So even if it is a fictional story, I can’t help but think about which parts I agree with and which I don’t agree with. I don’t believe in God, but I did grow up connected to a church and therefore I’m closer to the idea of a Christian God then I am to other religions. It’s a lot easier to think about how humans relate to a God in this context for me then it is in any other. I found myself arguing with the book. In The Shack Young manages to write something in one sentence that I absolutely disagree with and something I agree with in the very next sentence. I am very glad I bought my own copy because I have never before written so much in the margins of any book. While there are some beautiful idea’s about the nature of God shown (it’s all about relationships), there are also a few fundamental ones about the nature of humanity I dislike. (Several times allusions are made that humanity as a whole is inherently broken. Which: NO.) All in all, it’s a book that does not resemble my own thoughts, because I don’t believe in God and look at humanity from a different perspective, but it is a good book.

If you’re in any way interested in religion and the way people relate to God I would read this book. It’s well written and well paced, and can bring up all sorts of interesting discussions with other people about the subject. I don’t want to spoil the book here, so that’s why I’m not going into a lot of details.

One of the things I love about The Shack is the visual writing. The way the surroundings of the characters are described and the different versions of God that are shown. It is this that inspired me for the bookmark. The garden is lovely and wild and tended to by the lady I tried to depict.
I used a graphite pencil for a basic outline and colour pencils for the rest.

My English copy with the Dutch one from the library, called De Uitnodiging (The Invitation), and the bookmark.

The Book Thief – Markus Zusak

Warning: This book leads to heavy emotions. The Book Thief is such an amazing read. It’s pretty unconventional, the narrator is Death, and he doesn’t really uphold a spoiler-policy. He flat out tells you that one character is going to die during this story, quite a while before it actually happens. Death is a surprisingly sympathetic narrator. He has a job and it weighs on him. The Book Thief takes place during WWII, so he has a lot of souls to collect. He watches colours to distract himself from the suffering. (At one point I was reading a particular heavy section of Death talking about collecting a lot of souls, and my music shuffled to the Graffiti6 song Colours. I’ll never hear that song again without thinking about the narrator of this book.)
But the references to Deaths work are only there to give a greater context to the very human story he tells. The Book Thief is about Liesl. A young girl growing up in Germany during the war.

Liesl and her friends and family become incredibly real during the book. It is so well written that you can’t help but feel these people are humans who just try to live their lives. Even though in some cases you know what’s coming (even if you don’t know how it’ll happen) you can’t help getting attached to them. Or at least I couldn’t. Even when I know everything already because I’ve read it before, I still go through all the emotions alongside Liesl. The happiness and the sorrow. As a book-lover seeing the meaning books and the words in them take on in her life is really satisfying. This is a girl who gets it. Even before she can read, she gets the importance of books. I’m not entirely happy with my bookmark on this one. But I guess a part of that is because I love this book so much. No matter how good my work is, it will never do justice to The Book Thief in my eyes. When I try to get away from that, I feel better about the bookmark I made.

I’m reluctant to tell more about the happenings in the book. You should just go read it. Do it. NOW.

This copy of the book hasn’t been in the library for very long, but it’s been read a lot. I think people will read it until it falls apart (it’s already a bit damaged) and the library will have to get a new copy. I’m glad it’s such a popular book. It deserves to be read by everybody in the whole world.
At two points in the book someone left a piece of paper, just a page ripped out of a day planner and a receipt from the library. I left them in where I found them, it felt a bit like running into the other readers. I hope the next reader will like the addition of the bookmark I made.