Weird bookmarks ... the rebuttal

The last post referenced the Forgotten Bookmarks blog. It featured a guest post photo I sent in of my friend Amber's book stuffed with a mélange of weirdness. Amber, feeling unduly maligned, felt she needed to do a rebuttal to defend her stuffing-of-random-things-in-books to hold her place.   

So here's Amber (aka Leaping Gazelle - her code name for being tall):  

Yes - Jan is obsessed with my 'bookmarks'. She constantly admonishes me for the weird and random things I leave in them and do to them - sticky finger prints, dead mosquitoes, coffee stains, broken spines and dog eared pages are another topic entirely. I may remind her that I lend her these books free of charge. We have some philosophical differences. She believes books are to be revered. I believe books are to be devoured and stuffed with the junk of life!

Other things I have found in her books that were used as bookmarks included a strip of braided leather that smelt like sweet grass, a 'take-a-number' number from when the Indian Consulate General came to town to issue visas and we lined up to get our visas for India, and a long grocery receipt that included, among other things: paneer, cream cheese, extra old cheddar and black beans! ('nuf said).

In Amber's defense she is a voracious reader of all genres. She swears that she is not a writer, but I keep telling her that she must have been an editor in another lifetime because she is dead on in her critiques and, while she isn't in my writers' critiquing group, I use her as a reader.

My writer friend in New York, Jocosa wrote to tell me that if I don’t use: 11am Wear Open Toed Shoes as the title of my next book that she would steal it and use it for the title of her next book. I told Jocosa to go ahead and steal it as Amber, and my other friends, are used to me stealing their words ;-j