<story><title>Bookstore Chain Borders is Dead</title><url>http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/07/18/its-almost-official-borders-is-dead/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wheels</author><text>I can&apos;t tell if bookstores have gotten markedly worse or if I&apos;ve simply become more discriminating in what I&apos;m looking for.  When Barnes and Noble, Borders, et al first swept through the US I thought it was wonderful.  I&apos;ve spent an inordinate amount of money and time in big-box bookstores.&lt;p&gt;I moved to Germany some 9 years ago.  In my first trips back to the US a bookstore was one of the detours I was most excited about.  I&apos;d typically return to Germany with a couple hundred bucks worth of books stuffed into my bag.  My family, noticing this, started a habit of buying me B&amp;#38;N gift certificates (a pattern that&apos;s continued to this day).&lt;p&gt;But now, 9 years and thousands of dollars of Amazon.de purchases later, I can&apos;t say that I&apos;m terribly excited about visiting the big box stores.  I struggled to spend my most recent gift certificate.  &lt;i&gt;Struggled!&lt;/i&gt;  I went looking for books on Chinese history, and in a two story Barnes and Noble in an upscale Houston neighborhood there were &lt;i&gt;two&lt;/i&gt; books on the history of the most populous country in the world.  There were huge aisles of random throwaway junk, games and other silliness and &lt;i&gt;two books on Chinese history&lt;/i&gt;.  Nor did they have Bertrand Russel&apos;s &lt;i&gt;Principles of Mathematics&lt;/i&gt; or Aldous Huxley&apos;s &lt;i&gt;Chrome Yellow&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;I love books.  Paper books.  I have around a thousand of them.  But I won&apos;t cry for the passing of the big-box stores if they&apos;re bent on becoming the Wal-Mart of reading.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>makmanalp</author><text>I&apos;ll bring in another perspective. I&apos;m in a huge dilemma.&lt;p&gt;I love books. I also like paper books, but I believe that in the long run we&apos;re better off without them for economic and environmental reasons, and e-books are a pretty darned good alternative. I think that the inherent value of a book is its contents. Whether it is tangible or not doesn&apos;t matter as much.&lt;p&gt;Because of this, I think book romanticism is pretty stupid. However, I can&apos;t help but feel captivated by it. I have a few theories on why this may be so:&lt;p&gt;I do like that my books are tangible possessions, that I can look back at the notes my father made into them in college, that I can find an old train pass I used as a bookmark that brings back memories. Or I know that that mark is from when I spilled coffee all over my theory of computation book when I fell asleep studying for the final. I associate my books with other things, thoughts. Currently this doesn&apos;t quite work this way with e-books. That&apos;s why they don&apos;t feel &quot;personal&quot;. This can be remedied, but I don&apos;t know to what extent.&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t give a damn about big box stores, but I care very much about my local stores. The difference is in experience. When I&apos;m buying a book, I don&apos;t want to feel like I&apos;m a standardized entity there to benefit a company whose sole purpose is to maximize profits. The alternative to this what I can only describe as &quot;intellectual flirtation&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Example: Today I happened to have some free time and I wandered into my favorite bookstore. I looked around, grabbed a book about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and sat in a corner reading for an hour. No one nagged me to buy anything. The book was well written but it wasn&apos;t as comprehensive as I hoped, so I moved to the fiction section, and onto mathematics, dipping into books as I wished. Finally, I found a book about the role of Tea in Japanese culture and decided to buy it. While I was paying, the cashier struck up a conversation with me about the book itself and we had a small debate about the topic and he also recommended another author to me.&lt;p&gt;Now, as you can see the act of going to a bookstore is not a thing I do just to buy books. I do it so I can have a change of scenery and pace, relax, learn and have some personal time to just think (when do we do that, seriously?). I also do it because it&apos;s profoundly social (i.e. not web 2.0 style &quot;me too&quot; social). I like conversing about the things I find interesting, and it seems bookstores gather people like me, whether they work there or just visit to buy. Finally, the cost of all this is a possible few extra dollars on my book.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s a tough choice for me.</text></comment>
<story><title>Bookstore Chain Borders is Dead</title><url>http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/07/18/its-almost-official-borders-is-dead/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wheels</author><text>I can&apos;t tell if bookstores have gotten markedly worse or if I&apos;ve simply become more discriminating in what I&apos;m looking for.  When Barnes and Noble, Borders, et al first swept through the US I thought it was wonderful.  I&apos;ve spent an inordinate amount of money and time in big-box bookstores.&lt;p&gt;I moved to Germany some 9 years ago.  In my first trips back to the US a bookstore was one of the detours I was most excited about.  I&apos;d typically return to Germany with a couple hundred bucks worth of books stuffed into my bag.  My family, noticing this, started a habit of buying me B&amp;#38;N gift certificates (a pattern that&apos;s continued to this day).&lt;p&gt;But now, 9 years and thousands of dollars of Amazon.de purchases later, I can&apos;t say that I&apos;m terribly excited about visiting the big box stores.  I struggled to spend my most recent gift certificate.  &lt;i&gt;Struggled!&lt;/i&gt;  I went looking for books on Chinese history, and in a two story Barnes and Noble in an upscale Houston neighborhood there were &lt;i&gt;two&lt;/i&gt; books on the history of the most populous country in the world.  There were huge aisles of random throwaway junk, games and other silliness and &lt;i&gt;two books on Chinese history&lt;/i&gt;.  Nor did they have Bertrand Russel&apos;s &lt;i&gt;Principles of Mathematics&lt;/i&gt; or Aldous Huxley&apos;s &lt;i&gt;Chrome Yellow&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;I love books.  Paper books.  I have around a thousand of them.  But I won&apos;t cry for the passing of the big-box stores if they&apos;re bent on becoming the Wal-Mart of reading.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>panacea</author><text>&amp;#62;But I won&apos;t cry for the passing of the big-box stores if they&apos;re bent on becoming the Wal-Mart of reading.&lt;p&gt;There&apos;s likely some bad decision making behind a move towards a &apos;Wal-Mart-ification&apos; of the big-box stores, but are you sure they could have survived if they tried to compete with the advantages of a warehouse full of diverse stock and shelf space that is virtual and costs nothing to expand by adding pages (ala Amazon).&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that they&apos;ve acted more like fish in a pond that&apos;s been drying up. Struggling to stay in a deep enough spot to keep breathing.&lt;p&gt;I get a better price, better selection and more information browsing Amazon, but I&apos;m not about to blame the physical book stores for going out of business because &lt;i&gt;they changed&lt;/i&gt;, &lt;i&gt;man&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/07/12/the-secret-bookstore/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/07/12/the-secret-boo...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>