Please weigh in on the (very friendly and light-hearted) argument between my partner and me.
I don’t use bookmarks or dog-ear my pages, and my partner thinks I’m crazy. When I’m done reading for the day, I just close the book. When I pick it back up, I remember approx. how far I’d gotten in the book and open it it that ballpark area. Then I glance at the page to see if it looks familiar or not, and skip forwards or backwards accordingly.
The obvious disadvantage of this is that I could end up spoiling something for myself this way, but this happens very rarely to me. I guess over the years, I’ve gotten pretty good at superficially glancing at the words or skimming the page for the overall structure without really taking in any of the content.
What I experience as a benefit, though, is that I start reading from the last thing I actually *remember* from the story, instead of from where I actually left off. Sometimes, this means I’m re-reading a page or two, but that helps me catch up on the things I might have forgotten since the last time I read. I’m a pretty slow and sporadic reader, so this works as a “and that’s what you missed last time” summary and I think that’s part of why I don’t often abandon books: I’ll just take it from the last place I actually remember.
My partner, however, thinks it’s chaotic and is convinced that the book community (famously protective of their bookmarks, I hear) would be upset with me over my lawless, bookmarkless behaviour. What are your thoughts? Are there more of us that live bookmark free, or do you agree with my partner that I’m actually a little bit of a chaos demon?
by Arc925