I found a bookmark

We’re not the only ones who love bookmarks

Eefje — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:33:23 +0000

Mirage Bookmark is a company that makes all sorts of bookmarks and collects bookmark related information on their website. They’ve just posted about our little project, which they learned about via my Flickr. Browsing their website is pretty fun, with all the different bookmark and library pictures, and I love that we’re included.

On a different note: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I’m currently reading, is hilarious. It has beautiful illustrations, so I’m a little nervous whatever bookmark I end up making will pale in comparison. I guess we’ll see when I get there.

Something new

Eefje — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:25:42 +0000

When I launched this site I posted about it on the forum of the Nerdfighters Ning, a place where fans of the vlogbrothers gather to be awesome together. Because it is in the nature of Nerdfighters to get excited and do stuff I thought some of them would like I found a bookmark. (And it worked, Rachael joined the project thanks to that forumpost.)

Something new is happening there right now. I had thought that the post had dropped to far on the forum to get many replies, since that is the nature of most forum posts. But I was wrong (yay!). Someone ( MoonMuffin ) from Saudi Arabia responded and asked whether it would be cool to do something similar in bookstores since there are no libraries where she lives.

How awesome is that? You go to a bookstore and buy a book, and as a surprise you get a handmade bookmark related to the book to go with it! Just because someone was kind enough to make one for you.
She started a new thread on the forum for leaving bookmarks in bookstore-books, hopefully it’ll be a hub for people liking the idea and trying it out for themselves.

I just love how people can come across an idea and make it their own. Ideas growing like that is how they stay alive. Every new version of a concept is an exiting new thing that can inspire the next person.

DFTBA!

The Towers Of Romander – W.J. Maryson

Eefje — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:57:59 +0000

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I loved Marysons earlier Meestermagiër (Mastermage) series when I read it years ago so I expected to at least really like this first book in the Onmagiër (Unmage) series. Maybe my expectations were too high. It’s not a bad book, but it didn’t touch me the way good books do. One of the reasons it took me so long to finish was because I just didn’t really care to know what would happen. It felt like Maryson was just going though the motions, insert spunky character there, wise leader there, battle hardened warrior over here. One of the problems might be that it was very clearly not the whole story. It’s a part of a series, but as a stand alone book it just doesn’t work. And my opinion is that if a book doesn’t have a good climax that resolves something, it’s not a full book and it shouldn’t pretend it is. Yes, one of the conflicts does get resolved in the last chapter, but it happens in a way that isn’t a surprise at all for the reader. And considering Maryson keeps his readers in the dark about a lot of things yet to come by having characters starting to discuss something and then ‘cutting away’ to a different scene (a technique I don’t really care for) the heavy foreshadowing for the last chapter is painfully obvious. The main conflict has only just started, and I’m not sure I want to read the other books and finish the actual story…

One thing I do think Maryson does very well here, is give his world a sense of history. It’s important for the story, but it’s also just good world-building. He starts every chapter with a quote from characters we never meet in the story. It’s the historians of Romander that give us the context for the chapters. For the story he cuts back nine thousand years to a mage called Randoel who is planning for the future we see his other characters living in. Although some of these chapters suffer from the plot-dictated secrecy, thinking about this one guy trying to find ways to help people far in the future appeals to me. It makes me think about how to leave a mark on this world that makes a difference. Maryson is also good at describing the surrounding landscape and how that influences his characters or shows something about their personality. Which is why I chose to make the bookmark about solitary Randoel and where he chooses to do his thinking.

I used a mechanical pencil, Tim Holtz distress ink and tea (yes tea).

W.J. Maryson was the pseudonym of Wim Stolk, who died in march 2011. He was, to my knowledge, the only really successful Dutch fantasy-author (and he used an English sounding name to do it with). I remember reading the first Meestermagiër book and being so impressed with the use of language that I flipped to the information page in the beginning of the book to see who’d translated this so incredibly well. To my surprise the Dutch was so well written because it was written in Dutch. I’d never expected that because in my experience all fantasy-authors hailed from countries where English is the native language and because the name on the book was ‘W.J. Maryson’. I’ve always kind of wished it would have said ‘Wim Stolk’.

Introducing Rachael!

Rachael — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:37:12 +0000

Hello, world!

With the coming of the new year, “I Found a Bookmark” is welcoming its first ever addition to the authorship: me.

First, a brief introduction: my name is Rachael. I am currently sixteen years old and live in the city of Ann Arbor, in Michigan, USA. While I have interests that vary from film and opera to business and physics, my first love was and always has been books. Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of wandering about my local library, picking out increasingly larger volumes to add to my weekly collection. Today, libraries are just as precious to me as they were so many years ago. For this reason, I have decided to hop on board the “Bookmark” project with the hope of improving the library experience for other readers in my area.

My favorite novels include specimens from the classic, fantasy, science fiction, and young adult genres, and so my additions to this blog are most likely to fall into one or more of those categories. In addition to my native English, I have studied French both formally and informally for a number of years now, so you might see a few French titles appearing now and then! Suggestions for French novels are welcomed, though it should be noted that my local library has a more limited selection than, say, an actual library in a Francophone country.

With any luck, you’ll be hearing more from me very soon. In the meantime, may your New Year be filled with worn pages and the scent of adventure!

~ Rachael

An Abundance of Katherines – John Green

Eefje — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:45:08 +0000

Feeling like there is a piece of you missing is something everybody will recognize I think. We all at some point in our lives, most likely in adolescence, feel incomplete. That’s just human. It probably happens every time something changes in your life you weren’t prepared for. We often search for our missing piece through our connections with others. (We are herd-animals after all.) Everyone does this, we might call it a different name, but we feel we need others to be complete.
The missing piece and trying to figure oneself out is something that resonated with me in An Abundance of Katherines. I hope this bookmark will give the next reader a sense of recognition.

I made the bookmark with a mechanical pencil, watercolour pencils and a waterbrush. It looks a bit smoother in real life, my scanner always pics up a lot of tiny detail (and scans the image a bit lighter than it is).

My English copy of An Abundance of Katherines next to the Dutch edition from the library (19 keer Katherine, I think it would’ve been better if they’d spelled out 19, Negentien keer Katherine). If a book is written in English I prefer to read it in English, although I am always curious about how good the translation is. Translating seems to me like such an incredibly difficult profession! You have to be fluent in both languages, be a good writer, and keep true to the style and voice of the original. 19 keer Katherine is a good translation, it still feels like An Abundance of Katherines. The only things that are really different are the anagrams and that is by necessity.

The concept

Eefje — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:21:39 +0000

Almost three years ago I came up with an idea that I never put to practice, until now.
I wrote about it in Dutch on my blog and wondered if I ever would actually do it, or if someone else would. Now I’m going to try, and I hope lots of people will join me.

This is the concept:

1• Get blanc cards.
2• Be a member of the library.
3• Borrow a book and read it.
4• Take one of your cards and make a bookmark out of it that relates to the book you’ve just read. You can draw, paint, play with typography or just write, be creative!
5• Scan/Take a picture of the bookmark.
6• Put the image in a blog post here and write about what in the book inspired you for the bookmark.
7• Write the link to this blog on the back of the bookmark.
8• Put your bookmark in the library book and return it to your library.
9• Repeat steps 1-8.

Would the librarians remove the bookmark or leave it for the new reader to see? Will people appreciate the bookmark and want to keep it or will they throw it out or leave it in the book for the next person? Will they get curious enough to come to this website or will it fade into obscurity? Will I be the only one doing this or will people all over the world want to join me or start their own version of the project. Getting more bookmarks into libraries everywhere would be a lot more awesome then just the few I made in my library. Maybe someone will read a book, see the bookmark and make one of their own to put with it. I hope this project will grow and everybody who wants to can join in.

What do you think? Leave me a comment!