> I’ve have had enough bookmarks fall out of the book that I have changed my strategy.

I solved this with small post-it notes I use as bookmarks. Some of my textbooks and recipe books have dozens of them, colour-coded. Very convenient.

For novels I just stopped using bookmarks. I open roughly where I left off, read a sentence. If the book is new or I read it last recently, it’s accurate to within a page or two. If I remember the sentence, I skip forward a couple of pages, otherwise I skip back. Occasionally I reread a paragraph I forgot. Otherwise it just reminds me of what was happening before a new reading session.