Musings and Ponderings: Bookmarks

Welcome to a new instalment of posts! I'm calling these my Bookish Musings and Ponderings, where I pick a topic related to books and talk about them. I welcome any and all discussions, so please leave comments!

I love physical books. Given the choice between physical and electronic books, I will 100% always choose physical books. There's just something...more real about them, you know? Like the worlds inside them physically exist, because the book physically exists too.

Which leads me to today's discussion topic: bookmarks!

Just what is a bookmark? Well by definition:

A pretty accurate definition, no? But I want to focus on one part:

"A strip of leather, cardboard, or other material used to mark one's place in a book."

I personally don't use strips of leather or cardboard as bookmarks. I use other stuff. I know there are tons of people who use anything--and I mean anything--as a bookmark. I do that too when I can't find my bookmark. Like receipts, pens, bracelets, rubber bands, etc. But I have a set of bookmarks I prefer to use, which I will be sharing with you today!

First up, I have these metal ones. They're actually all gifts I acquired throughout a few years. They all have inspiration quotes on them (you might have to zoom in on the picture to read them). I love the strands tied at the top, especially how multicoloured they are. They make great colour accents since they hang out of the book! I use these bookmarks for my own personal books, and because of that, I have a tendency to pick the bookmark by how the colour of its strands matches the cover of the book. Sometimes I like them to match, other times I like them to contrast just to make a statement. ;)

Next up, I have these laminated bookmarks. Three of them were actually individual birthday gifts coordinated by some very dear friends of mine (thank you so much Queenie, Anushya and Joyce--I love you guys. You're the best of the best, and I couldn't have asked for better friends <3), drawn and laminated by them! I'm one of those people that stick bookmarks fully into books, rather than leaving the top sticking out (unless there's something at the top that's made for sticking out). I use these bookmarks for mainly for library books or school books, because if the pages are dirty, I can easily wipe/clean these bookmarks (so I'm slightly germophobic--sue me).

And then I have these bookmarks! You place these along the inside of the pages and they stick up at the top. Actually, the one with the moon and the star is supposed to wrap all around the book, but I found that the elastic wasn't long enough, and more often or not ended up straining the pages, so I just use it as one long bookmark. 

And lastly, I have my miscellaneous bookmarks. Actually, I only have one. It's a called a Zippermark, and is super cute! Basically, the very top of it sits on the pages, so when you hold the book sideways, it looks like there's something on the pages. I've seen other bookmarks online that resemble this one, but had the words "I'm Reading" or "To be Continued..." on them instead of the zipper pattern, but I have no idea where I could possibly get them!

So that's it for this bookmark post! What kind of bookmarks do you guys use? Do you collect bookmarks? Any bookmarks you like in particular? Do you ever try to colour-coordinate your bookmarks to the books, or is that just me? What do you think of having quotes on bookmarks? Let me know!

(P.S. If you guys have any suggestions for other book-related musing posts for me, please let me know in the comments! I'm trying to do more book musing posts, not just reviews and tags. Thanks!)