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.
By night, he's the voyeuristic force behind where he shares the weird objects he has found among the stacks at his store.įorgotten Bookmarks is a scrapbook of Popek's most interesting finds. But what becomes of those forgotten bookmarks? What stories could they tell?īy 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. There have been so many over the years that Popek has started a separate blog just for them, called Handwritten Recipes.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. The items included in the book range from the expected – actual bookmarks, photographs, and receipts – to the unusual, including a hairnet (inside Elements of Mechanics and Machine Design) and unused cap gun caps (inside Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship). If he is able to easily identify the people involved, he might make a note about who they were and where they lived. When there are words involved, he offers a transcription. He generally includes a photograph of the book and the item found. There is little or no commentary from Popek. The book is formatted in much the same way as the blog. It began as a simple little project, a way of sharing his finds with people he thought would appreciate them, and, as of last month, it has taken the form of beautiful book chronicling some of the most memorable items from his collection. The first blog that I ever followed with any sort of consistency, and that I still follow, is Forgotten Bookmarks. It’s a blog curated by Michael Popek, a used and rare bookseller, and it features the forgotten items that he finds pressed between the pages of the books he buys.
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