Local Bookstores, Feh.
These are two books that I have been wanting to buy for several months:
and
They are from two of the great writers on The Exile. (Three if you count The War Nerd.) Dr. Dolan graciously offered to send me a copy of his book, but I waited too long to write back. Then it felt kind like it would have been kind of awkward to write back.
So on a trip to Berkeley I went to Cody’s, Moe’s, and Shakespeare & Co. to buy copies. They didn’t have copies. So I waited to go to Kepler’s to buy them. Nothing there. I was in Pegasus on Solano Ave. last weekend, and they didn’t have copies. So I said, “Fuck it.” (I actually said, “Fuck it,” right there in the store. No one heard, though.) I just remembered: Neither book could be found at a bookstore on Shattuck that my friend is manager at. And the Borders in Palo Alto didn’t have either book, but I wasn’t expecting them to. The clerk there said that at one time they had one copy of The Exile book, but it was sold a long time ago. At least he knew what I was talking about. And the Stanford Bookstore didn’t have it.
So Sunday night I went to Amazon, read a few reviews, and bought both books. I also picked up a cool book on penetration testing with Google that I read about on Slashdot a few weeks before.
Technically speaking these two aren’t local authors, but Mr. Ames grew up in the South Bay and lived in Foster City for a while. Dr. Dolan taught at Berkeley. His book is about Berkeley, even. So there is a local connection there. Finding these kinds of books right when I want them is supposed to be a benefit of having all these independent, locally owned bookstores all lying around the place. Dammit, a self-centered consumer was slightly inconvenienced here. I demand justice!
So when I heard that Cody’s was shutting down I felt a pang of guilt — like that one character in that one book. I dared to think ill of independent, locally owned bookstores and now one was dead. When Kepler’s closed I clapped and clapped because I believe in fairies and then it came back alive. But now I’d really done it. I’m sorry, Cody’s. I’m sorry I didn’t buy more of those cool, glossy science books from you, and I’m sorry that I always spoke a little too loudly at the Information desk to make the person behind the desk feel slightly uncomfortable. I may not be able to read the books I bought on Amazon with all these tears in my eyes.
Now I will seek absolution by confessing my sins: I went to Kepler’s and I wanted to buy a book on Bansky but they didn’t have it and I had to spell it twice for them and they never heard of him and they didn’t have any books on stencil art at all. And then I was in the mood for a biography of Lincoln for some weird reason and they only had that one about how he picked people who were his rivals for his cabinet or the people in his cabinet were rivals and it sounded like a fucking management book so no thanks to that. Lincoln is the most biographed person in the universe next to Jesus and they only had that one and not even the Carl Sandburg one that I wanted to at least have a quick look at so I went home and read the wikipedia entry on Lincoln and that will keep my curiosity satisfied for a while and at least I learned that Lincoln was widely believed to have been involved in the Kennedy assassination. And once I went to Barnes & Noble in Foster City and asked for their books on search engine marketing and all they had were books on how to make money on eBay. Okay B&N aren’t independent or locally owned but still it sucked because if they didn’t carry that kind of stuff then who would? And then I went to Tower Records next door and they were out of Black Booty in their adult magazine section but had a million stupid 1,000th issues of Rolling Stone magazine and a way old issue of Waxpoetics but one Cometbus which was cool but I miss when he used to handwrite them so I bought a Nostalgia 77 CD because of their cool White Stripes cover with Alice Russell singing on it but all the other songs were subdued jazzy stuff that I didn’t want. And one time I went to Kepler’s to buy Freakonomics for me and my friend and my dad (3 copies, beeyotch!) but they were sold out so just for kicks I typed it into Limewire when I got back home and found a PDF version of the book for free that I downloaded and would have read the whole thing but it hurt my eyes. I eventually bought two copies but I forgot where I bought them. And I took a bunch of books that didn’t fit into my house over to Half Price Books in Fremont and they stacked them all up on a table and made me wait for an hour while two guys talked about stuff and then they gave me $50 and said that my books “had their day” but they were in nice condition so I asked the guy if he liked the first edition of Rabbit at Rest and the first six or so McSweeny’s he said oh yeah, we could probably sell those but I was too hungry to stack them up and get out of there and didn’t have time anyway so I gave the two other car loads to the Palo Alto library and thought I’d rather have someone have the joy of finding these books and maybe making money with them on eBay rather than these guys who were clearly ripping me off while they swish their grey ponytails around but I still kind of felt like a sucker for a week and thought I made a terrible mistake getting rid of all of these books but then after that week I was glad to not worry about the books sitting around in boxes in the basement. And I saw Thomas Friedman talk at work and I got a free copy of The World Is Flat and he made no fucking sense during his talk so I gave it to a guy who was flying to India that week. And then I saw Dr. Watson the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA give a rambling talk about autism and genetics and got a free copy of his book and gave it to a guy I work with who I’m about 98% sure will never read it. And I was reading a Dr. Laura book before my recent Amazon purchases came because I couldn’t find them at any of the Bay Area’s finest independent, locally-owned bookstores and before that I read some Jeeves stories by Wodehouse and my first thought was that his books are so well plotted that he would have been a good programmer and then I felt ashamed and then I read another story. And a million people have asked me if I’ve read Da Vinci Code and I don’t know why. And a couple of people have asked me if I read that Frey book and I frankly don’t know what the fuck they are getting at. Those are my sins and I confess them freely. Amen.
I will send this to a friend of mine who was really upset about Cody’s closing to write a rebuttal. By the way, Slate had a good article about independent, locally owned bookstores but my network is flaky so I can’ t link to it. Use a search engine.
May 25th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
I can’t believe it took you so long to realize all this. I realized this years ago when someone made the stupid mistake of giving me a B&N gift certificate that I’d have to use at a brick & mortar store. Getting to the B&N in Foster City was a soul-killing affair due to traffic and parking and all sort of other miserable obstacles. Then I’d get there and they’d never have what I wanted. They’d often take it to the next level by taunting me: Looking up in their inventory that they SHOULD have three copies, but they’re just not there on the shelf! This would be technical stuff like the O’Reilly book on DNS or whatever, and we’re talking the height of the Internet boom. Then they’d have the audacity to tell me that they could order it and I could come back in 3 weeks and it would be there. Well, fuck, the WHOLE REASON I went to a store was for instant gratification (and to use my gift certificate, but they didn’t know that). If I felt like waiting, I could have ordered on Amazon and it would have come to my front door instead, but in less time.
Brick & mortar book stores of any kind are surely still fine if you go in there not knowing what you want and are open-minded to just browsing and walking out with something. That’s not me, though. I went back to B&N again a few weeks later when I was seeking something that I was sure they’d have, and they once again didn’t have it. The gift certificate ultimately went unused and expired. I now order everything through Amazon. The same goes for music (even more so, in fact). Fuck it.
May 31st, 2006 at 2:37 pm
I went to the Books-a-Million (BAMM.com) at the new Levis Square development out in Perrysburg last Sunday. Earlier that same day I looked at a bunch of bookstores in Yellow Springs, Ohio, all hippied out. Guess where I bought more stuff. BAMM has the best magazine section, and hippies have terrible books, though one of the hippie bookstores had a pretty big selection of Dostoevsky. In my own town, there is one tasteful small independent bookshop near my office, and I really do make an effort to go there, but there are always three dames up front braying to one another about how fabulous it is that they’re *such readers*.