There are few objects in a reader's life that are more ubiquitous yet personal than the common bookmark. This realization was reinforced last week as I read Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's story, "The Bookmark," from his wonderful collection, Memories of the Future (translated by Joanne Turnbull for NYRB Classics).

When the story's narrator rediscovers a favored bookmark with "a flat body of faded blue silk and needlepoint designs trailing a swallowtail train," he recalls, "We hadn't seen each other in a long time: my bookmark and I."

Books had crossed his path in the interim, but "they did not need bookmarks. . . . One consumed these texts posthaste, without reflecting or delectating: both books and two-wheeled carts were needed then strictly to supply words and ammunition. The one with the silk train had no business here."

He thinks fondly of "all the voyages we had taken together--from meanings to meanings, from this set of signatures to that." Now, he resolves, it is time again to "include my old friend in my next reading; instead of a series of memories, I should offer my guest another bundle of books."

Despite the fact that you can mark your place in a novel with Post-its, scraps of paper, napkins, template letters addressed "Dear bookseller or reviewer," dog-eared pages or repositioned end flaps, traditional bookmarks persist.

They must have been among the first sideline items ever sold in bookshops and still hold a place of honor for reliable inventory turns, especially during the holiday season. Bookmarks are a gift that keeps one--especially if the one in question is a hard-to-buy-for reading relative--literally in one's place.

And what other item is both sold and given away free in the same retail environment? Many, if not most, bookshops offer their patrons complimentary bookmarks with the store's logo, contact information and sometimes a pithy quote (perennial favorite: "So many books, so little time") as a promotional tool.

And though computer programmers have attempted to co-opt the term ("Bookmark this page," "Bookmark this item," "Organize Bookmarks," "Bookmarks Toolbar"), the simple act of slipping a flat piece of cardboard or leather or even silk between the pages of a book to save our place remains an important ceremony for readers.

Included among the features on the website for Mirage Bookmarks are a history lesson, bookmark exhibition, link to a Flickr group for vintage bookmarks, as well as a collection of relevant quotations. Two of my favorites:

• Why pay a dollar for a bookmark? Why not use the dollar for a bookmark?--Steven Spielberg
• I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed-reading accident. I hit a bookmark.--Steven Wright

Clearly bookmarks have been on my mind lately. Krzhizhanovsky's story inspired a journey round my office. Moving from shelf to shelf, I ran my fingers along the tops of volumes as I scanned for the presence of my "old friends" and quickly found one marking my place in Fusion Kitsch: Poems from the Chinese of Hsia Yu (translated by Steve Bradbury), a recent acquisition from the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, Cambridge, Mass. The store's bookmark features a blurb from Robert Creeley: "Poetry is our final human language and resource. The Grolier is where poetry still lives, still talks, still makes the only sense that ever matters."

Hidden in an old, broken down Modern Library edition of Henry David Thoreau's Walden was a bookmark from the Hartford Bookshop, Rutland, Vt. Although the bookmark reassured me that the shop was "est. 1835," the sad truth is that the Hartford did not make it beyond the 1970s.

A 17-year-old copy of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient preserved a black bookmark from Vintage International promoting Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières by linking it back to back with the Booker Prize winner. I must have kept it because I was a handselling fool for both books.

M.J. Rose's The Reincarnationist sheltered a bookmark from Partners & Crime mystery booksellers in Greenwich Village, where I'd attended a signing. Dava Sobel's Longitude had a glossy bookmark featuring color photos of "John Harrison's Timekeepers" from his 18th century pursuit of the longitude prize. There was an Adelphi University bookmark in my copy of Graham Greene: A Life in Letters and a beautifully understated Archipelago Books card resting in the pages of Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury.

Each one reminded me of "voyages we had taken together." So I invite you to take a journey round your shelves and see what ancient bookmark treasures are hidden there. Let me know what you find.--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1067.