What We Gain from a Good Bookstore • Hacker News Board

Re: What We Gain from a Good Bookstore

#21

Post by jonhohle » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #11

goldcd wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think that's what the article was getting at. (although I'm not quite sure what it was trying to do)

> I'm convinced I wouldn't find anywhere in store In the “old days“ before Amazon, you would place a custom order at the book store (Not a second-hand book store) and it’d arrive a while later.

In my teens I nearly wore out my local library’s copy of the Terminator 2 Illustrated Screenplay. In the late 90s, on a whim, I went into a B&N that had just been added to the mall where I worked and placed an order, even though I knew it had been long out of print and the likelihood of it ever showing up was near zero.

Around a year later I got a call that my book was in and I could go pick it up. When I arrived, a pristine, new, old-stock copy was waiting for me as if it were still 1991. I still have that book proudly displayed - both the joy of its contents and its discovery will accompany it for the rest of my life.

eBay, Amazon, Shop Goodwill have made this process immensely easier, but I still find joy and thrill in the random second hand store finds.

Re: What We Gain from a Good Bookstore

#22

Post by kingkawn » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

pradn wrote: post #17

thundergolfer wrote: post #8

I have come to value 2nd hand bookstores so much in day to day life that I maintain it as an almost 'must have' when assessing living locations. Great coffee shops are a dime a dozen in reasonably affluent areas, but a good 2nd hand bookshop adds so much warmth and charm to an area. I don't have any in walking distance from where I live right now, but I'm moving to NYC soon and will aim to correct that. (Shouldn't be…

The Strand is only worth going to as a tourist attraction (if you’re fully aware of its status as such), or if you need big art books (they’re unmatched in that category). In NY, I’d say take a look at Left Bank books (rare, old literature, photography, art books - some are even early editions of classics), Codex (little used shop with a fantastic selection), Mercer St Books and Records (basement hole in the wall), W…

The one true bookstore in nyc is Book Thug Nation in Williamsburg. The best curated selection of used literature I’ve ever come across and a smattering of other stuff too.

Re: What We Gain from a Good Bookstore

#23

Post by bee_rider » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

JasonFruit wrote: post #14

There are several good independent bookstores in Madison, WI, the medium-sized college town near which I live, and I'm happy to say that most seem to be well-supplied with customers who actually buy books, and have not resorted to the shenanigans this article describes. One of my favorites, Leopold's, does have a small coffee shop that serves the best coffee in town. That's not what makes me love it, though: its smal…

The analogy seems to fit goats a little better anyway. And we'd all like to be goats, right? Nobody wants to be a cow. I wonder if the specification of the ruminant was an addition by author of the article, and not really what was originally intended.

> “Books, like the leaves and shrubs known as the browsage, provide ruminant-readers with their nutrients,” Deutsch opines, at his purplest. “What an unparalleled activity it is to browse a bookstore in a state of curiosity and receptivity, chewing one’s intellectual cud!”

Re: What We Gain from a Good Bookstore

#24

Post by JasonFruit » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 2:54 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #23

JasonFruit wrote: post #14

There are several good independent bookstores in Madison, WI, the medium-sized college town near which I live, and I'm happy to say that most seem to be well-supplied with customers who actually buy books, and have not resorted to the shenanigans this article describes. One of my favorites, Leopold's, does have a small coffee shop that serves the best coffee in town. That's not what makes me love it, though: its smal…

The analogy seems to fit goats a little better anyway. And we'd all like to be goats, right? Nobody wants to be a cow. I wonder if the specification of the ruminant was an addition by author of the article, and not really what was originally intended. > “Books, like the leaves and shrubs known as the browsage, provide ruminant-readers with their nutrients,” Deutsch opines, at his purplest. “What an unparalleled activ…

I agree that it's a quibble with the article, not Deutsch.

Re: What We Gain from a Good Bookstore

#25

Post by BurritoAlPastor » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 3:10 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #13

BurritoAlPastor wrote: post #3

Ironic that this review of a memoir about bookstores starts off by linking to it on Amazon.

Amazon is a bookstore.

Fine, you pedant, it’s ironic that a textually sympathetic review of a memoir lionizing the virtues of secondhand brick-and-mortar bookstores, while fretting about their continuing viability as a business model, would link to the book on Amazon, a online-only store commonly considered to be the primary disruptor to that business model. Happy?

Re: What We Gain from a Good Bookstore

#26

Post by egypturnash » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 3:11 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #13

BurritoAlPastor wrote: post #3

Ironic that this review of a memoir about bookstores starts off by linking to it on Amazon.

Amazon is a bookstore.

Amazon is a huge e-commerce site that operates with brutal efficiency. It started out as a book seller but it is now a place you can buy pretty much anything, with zillions of third parties selling merchandise of dubious provenance through them.

As it grew from a book seller to what it is now, Amazon took a huge amount of business away from both the small booksellers that this book discussed in this article is mostly talking about, and the larger chain bookstores that were crushing a lot of those small booksellers underfoot at the time.

Hence, the irony: the first link is to buy a copy of this book about the virtues of small bookstores on Amazon, the company that ate a huge percentage of American retail stores, starting with books.

Re: What We Gain from a Good Bookstore

#27

Post by TedDoesntTalk » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 3:13 PM UTC

satiric wrote: post #15

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #10

I wonder if Gen Z will know book stores that aren’t Barnes & Noble or independents who sell everything from books to socks to chocolate, but still call themselves bookstores.

We'll I do and I'm gen z, although I've inherited that from my mom. If not for her I don't think I would care about bookstores at all. Not a lot of the people I know read books these days, it's been replaced by TV, YouTube, and video games. Not that that's inherently a bad thing (there's plenty of good, thoughtful content and plenty of mediocre, dopamine filled content - just like with books) but it will be interesti…

Thanks for the perspective.

Re: What We Gain from a Good Bookstore

#28

Post by prepend » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 3:17 PM UTC

I love bookstores (like most people in this thread, I assume) and notice the mtv-ization where they sell more stuff that book people like than actually books (puzzles, games, journals, art supplies).

I wonder if this is a spiral to try to stave off eventual closure or the future where there will be one shelf of books and the rest “book culture.”

Nothing makes me happier than going into a book store and seeing a huge stack of outbound internet sales to be mailed out.

Re: What We Gain from a Good Bookstore

#29

Post by waspight » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

thundergolfer wrote: post #8

I have come to value 2nd hand bookstores so much in day to day life that I maintain it as an almost 'must have' when assessing living locations. Great coffee shops are a dime a dozen in reasonably affluent areas, but a good 2nd hand bookshop adds so much warmth and charm to an area. I don't have any in walking distance from where I live right now, but I'm moving to NYC soon and will aim to correct that. (Shouldn't be…

Just curious, why is second hand book stores that important? I imagine that everything worth reading is available on Amazon and rated in Goodreads. I am just curious and hopefully I am totally wrong as well.

Re: What We Gain from a Good Bookstore

#30

Post by TedDoesntTalk » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #21

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm convinced I wouldn't find anywhere in store In the “old days“ before Amazon, you would place a custom order at the book store (Not a second-hand book store) and it’d arrive a while later.

In my teens I nearly wore out my local library’s copy of the Terminator 2 Illustrated Screenplay. In the late 90s, on a whim, I went into a B&N that had just been added to the mall where I worked and placed an order, even though I knew it had been long out of print and the likelihood of it ever showing up was near zero. Around a year later I got a call that my book was in and I could go pick it up. When I arrived, a…

Now I want that book :)