Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

This wonderful doodad is a Book Dart, invented by Bob and Jeanette Williams of Oregon.  It’s a little piece of thin bronze shaped into an arrow, which clips to a given page of text and highlights not only the page, but also the line of choice.  Apart from being aesthetically pleasing, they are archivally safe and won’t mark or distort the page in any way.  Bob Williams is an English teacher, librarian and archivist, so he’s pretty fussy about the way books are treated.

The Book Darts are inexpensive, particularly for a reusable item, and if you buy them from the charming, albeit slightly clunky,  Book Darts website, then they can cost as little as 11c each.  Or, if you’d rather buy them here in Australia, they’re available from the über chic Remo General Store.

I’ve been buying small envelopes of book darts to add to birthday and thank you cards. They’re the perfect gift for lawyers and barristers, high school students, teachers of just about anything, avid readers and, in my case, people with huge collections of cookbooks in which they can never find a recipe a second time. Everyone I’ve ever given these to adores them. They’re really very clever.