A Bookplate Fund

The Athenaeum is a library we joined last year because when you live in a little apartment in a cold city and the coffee shops seem to have sold all their chairs and tables, it becomes difficult not feel absolutely stir crazy for most of the winter. So we joined the Athenaeum which is up the street from our apartment, and is one of the oldest libraries in the country with George Washington’s personal library, ancient maps of Boston, yellowed books of death tolls, etc. The real reason we go there is for the reading rooms which are full of tables by tall windows that look out over Boston and everyone is hushed and typing away.

Almost all of their books are purchased from endowed funds which means–bookplates! Every new book, no matter how insignificant it might turn out to be, is marked with a bookplate, each with its own design. Of the many choices one has to stow money in and keep their name in circulation after they’re gone–park benches, college buildings, patenting a strain of bacteria–a small fund for book purchasing with your own bookplate seems like the best idea.

How could they have planned that the book purchased–Nora Ephron’s I Remember Nothing–would turn out to be robin’s egg blue?