Get In the Car, Loser

September 12th
8:54 PM EST

17 notes

"‘I know bookstores are supposed to be good things, but we don’t have video stores anymore, and maybe we need to get used to the new order instead of lamenting the old.’ This is what I’d say to his point: it totally sucks that there’s no more video stores. I spent long nights hanging out at Kim’s in college, deliberating for hours over which random German film from the nineteen-seventies to take home with me. I actually watched stuff like that all the way through then, maybe since I’d spent so much time and energy looking for it. I even miss Blockbuster: when I was a kid, the Friday-night trip to the video store to pick out a movie was the most exciting event of the week. How I watch a video now is: I browse on Netflix for a while, start watching something, get about five minutes in, wonder if I’ve made the right decision, and start the process over. It’s ridiculous, and yet I can’t…stop…clicking…

My point is that I wish we had been able to save the video store. I know the young citizens of the new order don’t miss it, but kids don’t miss anything: they’re kids. And since we haven’t entirely killed the bookstore yet, I would like us not to. Going into bookstores to browse, to attend readings, to interact with the staff, to see the selection they’ve curated—all these things excite me and entice me to read. If my book-buying experience becomes simply me sitting alone on the couch click, click, clicking, I don’t know what I’ll become…"

— The Book Bench: “Should We Fight to Save Indie Bookstores?” The New Yorker

August 22nd
5:21 PM EST

166 notes

blogfrombookstores:

Blogging From: Capitol Hill Books

Although the amount of shelves and rooms in this store seemed endless and the organization of the books isn’t always completely clear, it’s neither frustrating or annoying because there are tons of little notes that direct you happily towards whatever it is you might be looking for. Plus, browsing and searching and then finally discovering is the best part of bookstore browsing, and I can safely say that Capitol Hill Books is essentially one of the best places I have found for doing so. It’s the perfect set up for an exciting book exploration adventure. When you start, you’re not sure just what you’ll find but you know for sure that it’s going to be good. At one point I overheard a girl say to her friend, “This is like your heaven.” No, girl, this IS heaven; enough books to last a lifetime and plenty of friendly fellow book lovers to share them with. (Read more)

August 11th
11:50 AM EST

7 notes

Blogging From: Second Chapter Books

Confession: I found this quaint little bookstore on accident. I came into Middleburg in search of a store called Books & Crannies unaware of the fact that it actually no longer exists. Had I scrolled 1/3 of the way down their abandoned Facebook page, I would have easily learned that their last day in book business was October 26, 2010. (The day after my birthday!) I won’t lie, I walked up and down East Washington Street several times in search of Books & Crannies (that sounds so pun-y) thinking it was hiding from me in some sort of Order of the Phoenix Headquarters sort of way. Too bad that wasn’t true and the only reason I couldn’t find it is because it no longer exists. This was a disappointment because with a name like Books & Crannies I’m sure the store was Adorable with an enormous capital A. However, my disappointment was relieved when I stumbled upon Second Chapter Books.

(via blogfrombookstores)

August 7th
10:12 AM EST

19 notes

"I was once having dinner with an international group, and an American was complaining about the price of books in France. ‘Yes,’ said a Frenchman. ‘We have this silly theory in France that our authors should be able to eat.” We don’t know what the future of publishing is, but we know that the future for every writer requires food. And we know that one way to help writers eat is to encourage people to buy good books.’ "

— Tom Lutz in the LA Review of Books- “Future Tense” (via blogfrombookstores)

(via blogfrombookstores)

August 6th
12:42 PM EST

8 notes

"While writers like Lewis, Tolkien, Rowling, and others have done a great deal to popularize and legitimize the young adult genre, what we’re currently witnessing appears to be the genre’s true renaissance. It’s a time when these books are not only accepted by our culture, but actually embraced and celebrated. These days, reading (fanatical reading at that) is a part of young adulthood and there’s no reason to believe that digital age precludes that “touch of Harry in the night."

— Hannah Withers and Lauren Ross - “Young People Are Reading More Than You” (via McSweeny’s Internet Tendency: The State of Publishing)

(via blogfrombookstores)

August 4th
5:42 PM EST

9 notes

Books Without Borders- My Life at the World's Dumbest Bookstore Chain

blogfrombookstores:

“The heartbreaking thing is that this fall, over 10,000 bookstore employees across America will be out of work. The way the publishing industry is going, many of those people won’t be able to find jobs that are even tangentially related to books anymore; they’ll go on to work in movie theaters and grocery stores and as secretaries and child-care providers. They probably won’t be able to spend their days being obsessed with books, and that’s a bad thing for books, which have a hard enough time battling for attention in popular media.”

This is a great read and it also goes really well with my own little rant about Borders.

[via Scribner Books]

August 1st
6:21 PM EST

32 notes

Amazon, eBooks, and the demise of Borders and bookshop culture

Because I like bookstores – large and small. I like browsing. I like wandering the aisles and touching the books. Picking them up and feeling their weight. I like to pick an edition based on the way the pages feel in my hand. For me, buying a book is a tactile experience.

I like to browse books by subject – to get lost in the non-fiction section discovering biographies on obscure yet fascinating subjects. I like to be able to compare a book to its fellows. Rarely do I go into a book store with a specific purchase in mind. Through looking (and touching) I find the book that’s right for me at the moment – a book that fits my mood, my budget, my plans for the rest of the day.

Precisely.

(via blogfrombookstores)

July 25th
3:44 PM EST

6 notes

"You are seeing the chains are failing. And there are people who will always want the printed book – it’s just something special. There are times where even when it’s convenient to read on your e-reader, you want that printed word, you want that piece of art. You want it on your shelf. You want it in your hands. It just means something so special."

— Karen Hayes - Best Selling Author Anne Patchett Opens Independent Bookstore - Huffington Post (via blogfrombookstores)

July 19th
8:01 AM EST

2 notes

The Price of Typos

Some readers like to see portraits of authors they admire, study their personal histories or hear them read aloud. I like to know whether an author can spell. Nabokov spelled beautifully. Fitzgerald was crummy at spelling, bedeviled by entry-level traps like “definate.” Bad spellers, of course, can be sublime writers and good spellers punctilious duds. But it’s still intriguing that Fitzgerald, for all his gifts, didn’t perceive the word “finite” in definite, the way good spellers automatically do. Did this oversight color his impression of infinity? Infinaty?

Spell check is evil.

(Source: The New York Times)