Cracked Bindings and Dog Ears
Mar 01 '00
Long before I discovered women, back when I was still wearing pajamas with feet in them, I found my first true love: Books! There are few activities a person can engage it quite so rewarding as a good read. Books are portable, offer hours of entertainment for a small investment, can be enjoyed over and over again, can be shared with friends and family, and they can even teach you something if you aren't careful. Heck, they're even non-fattening and low in cholesterol.
Online Bookbuying
Online bookbuying, while not my favorite way to go, does have its good points. Firstly, it is convenient. So long as you have an idea what you are looking for, online shopping is a snap. While stuffing your face you can click a few links and have your shopping finished before you're done licking the ketchup from your fingers. You can also find just about anything you want if you search for a while, from titles put out by obscure little publishing houses to out of print gems that Waldenbooks can't get for you. Often there will also be user reviews on a particular book as well (although who needs them when we have Epinions?)
Online shopping does have many drawbacks though. Shipping costs can run very high, effectively negating any special savings that are offered. You must also wait for delivery. Some sites begin sending you spam after you use them, masked as a "service", as though sending advertisements was some favor they are doing you. Then there's the information profiles that they build on people. (Amazon.com was involved in a dispute over this practice last fall.) While I am not personally concerned about someone discovering my reading habits, some do worry.
By far the biggest drawback to online shopping is that the browsing experience is a pale shadow of its real-world counterpart. It is difficult to find anything unless you know what you are looking for beforehand. Often when I go to buy books, I don't have any notion what I am going to walk out of a store with. Online, browsing is usually relegated to a few bestseller lists, a couple of "If you liked this then check out..." links, and some subject lists. While that is fine for things like technical books, it's not very conducive to serendipity. Plus you can't pick up a book and get a feel for it by sampling the author's prose, see if it's got that dense typeface or those big letters that tend to annoy me. All in all, online shopping caters heavily to the searcher, and not at all to the browser.
The Real World
1. Retail Bookstores
While not the best place for bargains, retail bookstores are the staple for book sales. Barnes and Noble is my favorite, with big comfy chairs and a fantastically eclectic selection. Their prices aren't as cheap as many, but they carry a wide variety of books and don't really mind if you sit around all day reading them either. You can even get coffee and a roll if you want to munch a little while you read.
Besides your big name general booksellers, there are retail stores that cater to specific market niches, like science fiction, religion, or New Age reading tastes. If you are a niche reader, these smaller stores can be a better source for books than any of the generalists.
2. Used Bookstores
Now we're getting warmed up. There is nothing quite like a good used book store to make me feel like a kid in a candy shop! Most used book stores have steep, steep discounts, and will give you decent credit on books you take in. One common way of doing business is to charge half the book's cover price when selling, and credit one quarter the cover price when bringing books in. The best thing about this practice is that old books are dirt cheap! Two copies of, say Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" sit on the shelf, side by side. One, printed last year, has a cover price of $5.95. The other, printed in 1970, has a cover price of $.80! It doesn't take a pocket calculator to figure out the kind of deals you can get in these places. You can even purchase old copies of books you already own and then return newer copies for store credit if you are ambitious enough.
The other selling point of used bookstores is that they are fabulous places to go browsing. Depending on the store, you may have any arrangement from completely sectioned and alphabetized stock to a massive chaotic jumble with Kafka, Tolstoy and Shakespeare rubbing up against the likes of Harold Robbins, Stephen King, and a ratty old Harlequin Romance. Reaching into the pile and pulling out a title you've been thinking about, and then noticing that it's only going to cost you $.50 is like walking down the street and finding money.
3. Libraries
Believe it or not, libraries are a great source of books. This may seem pretty self-evident, yet I know that a lot of you haven't stepped foot in a library since your school days. Remember when the library was practically your only source of reading material? Sure, you do have to give the books back when you are finished, but they are free to read. Plus, as libraries get more books in, they often must sell off older ones to make room. When they do this, you can get very good prices, paying less for a hardbound volume than you would for the same thing in paperback.
Those of you, like me, who simply hate having to return a good book should still pay a visit to your local library. One thing that a lot of them have is a shelf set aside for people to trade books. You bring in any you don't want and leave them there. See something you like? It's yours. Gratis. Sometimes the library itself will remove books from their inventories and contribute to these freebie shelves.
4. Friends and Family
Some people out there refuse to reread a book. I don't understand this, but I know it's true. These people see nothing wrong with watching their favorite movie a dozen times, yet they are no more likely to read a book over again than I would be to swim the English Channel. Mention that you are reading a favorite book for the fourth time and they will give you a look like you're a square egg. Once these poor creatures have finished a book, they truly are finished with it. If you are fortunate enough to know one of these people, and if they have reading tastes that overlap your own, you are in luck. Often these people, without a second thought, will actually give books away! Although deep in my miserly, book-hoarding heart I know that there is something deeply and terribly wrong with these pitiful, demented souls, I also know that the best course of action is to keep my mouth shut and benefit from these poor folks' mental aberrations. Suddenly the phrase, "Read any good books lately?" becomes more than just a conversation opener, but like a junkie searching for a fix.
That's about it. The real world, for me anyway, beats its online counterpart nearly every time. Besides the joy of finding that great book for next to nothing, there's the whole sensory experience of actually physically picking up and touching a book that the online world cannot satisfy. Used books, with their well-worn covers dog ears, and faint mustiness, are even better than a crisp, new paperback right off the rack. There's something about having a book passed on to you, whether you pay for it or not, that adds a feeling of community to the normally solo act of reading. The sharing of books with others is a great feeling, even if you don't know who the last to read it was. (But if it's my book, you better return it buster!)
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Member: Chuck Hansen
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