I remember the Co-Op Bookstore in the Stone Road Mall. But I think it closed in the 1980s. Making this a very old bookmark indeed. Back in the days when Canadian bookmarks, even the ones that are just slips of paper with some printing on them, had to be “Made in [the] U.S.A.”

I’m not sure if the Stone Road location was associated with the University of Guelph’s Co-Op Bookstore, which is still in operation on campus. I don’t know why they would have had a storefront in the mall, but it’s possible.

Book: Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal by George Packer

Bookmarked Bookmarks

Something from the gift shop at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. So it must be more than ten years old, since the name was officially changed to the Canadian Museum of History in 2013. Which means this bookmark is itself now a bit of history. It currently resides in the Alex Good Museum of Bookmarks.

It must have been a gift to me because I’m sure I’ve never been to the place. Perhaps someday I’ll go. The picture is of a Tsimshian mask sculpture that apparently has a twin (only with eyeholes) in a museum in France.

Book: The Story of Civilization I: Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant

Bookmarked Bookmarks

I had an earlier Bookmarked! post featuring some of the library card art of Darryl Berger (“making art from obscure objects”). These three bookmarks are another set, being three different portraits of Napoleon painted on library cards of books about Napoleon. Love the concept and the execution. Great stuff!

Book: Napoleon: A Life by Adam Zamoyski

Bookmarked Bookmarks

I haven’t read the book this bookmark is advertising, though it sounds like it might be interesting. The editor was actually a neighbour of mine for a few years.

Book: Medieval Europe by Chris Wickham

Bookmarked Bookmarks

I think this may be the oak leaf cluster design, which is a military decoration. It has the three acorns. But then again it might be something else. I don’t remember where I got it. It looks nice.

Book: Another America: The Story of Liberia and the Former Slaves Who Ruled It by James Ciment

Bookmarked Bookmarks

An interesting, not to mention risky, business idea: Longhouse Books was launched in 1972 as a  bookstore that only sold Canadian titles. These were the heady days of peak Canadian cultural nationalism though and it did well for a while. The original owners sold it in 1989, and after relocating to the Bloor Street address you see printed on this bookmark it closed six years later. I lived on Bloor West for a while in the early ’90s but don’t remember ever visiting, though I must have dropped in at some point.

Book: Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited by Philip Eade

Bookmarked Bookmarks

This store wasn’t actually located in a cellar. I think they just liked the pun. It operated at street level, across from the fashionable Four Seasons Hotel in Yorkville (as the bookmark here proudly points out). Perhaps because of its convenient location it was apparently known as the book store to the stars because people like Elizabeth Taylor, Mick Jagger, and Madonna were seen shopping there. I believe it closed its doors in 1997.

Book: The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (ed. Alex Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan

Bookmarked Bookmarks

The Writers’ Trust has a bunch of literary prizes that they give out in different categories. The names sometimes change for branding purposes, but here’s a selection I’ve picked up celebrating the winners from previous years. From left to right: 2015 Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People, 2015 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, 2007 Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize for Fiction, 2015 Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 for Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People

Book: The Annotated Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (ed. William S. Baring-Gould)

Bookmarked Bookmarks

A leaf bookmark. But I don’t know what kind of leaf. I believe the morphology is known as “falcate.” I asked the person who gave it to me what it was and she said she didn’t know, she picked it up at an estate sale. So there you have it: a botanical-bookmark mystery!

Book: Poor Things by Alasdair Gray

Bookmarked Bookmarks

The last couple of posts have been of bookmarks that my friends brought me back from China. This is the third and final one, and is of blue-and-white pottery on a blade-style bookmark.

But it also comes with a special engraving: 郝好. This is pronounced “Hao Hao” (or something like that), and a few years back we came up with it as my “Chinese name.” The first character is a surname. The second basically means “good,” as in the greeting 你好 (ni hao: hello). I don’t think there are many people with the name Hao Hao, but it’s kind of fun. And a great bookmark!

Book: China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower by Frank Dikötter

Bookmarked Bookmarks