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Love this! Yes, its the same thing with shopping in a record store. The act of browsing is more satisfying than sitting on your butt clicking a few keys.
Sometimes I know exactly what I want and do not need it for a few days. Amazon works well for that.
Sometimes I just want something interesting to me but am not sure what that is ... until I stumble across it.
In Minneapolis-St. Paul, we are having a resurgence of vinyl shops, with new and used out for sale (some of the used CD shops hung on, as did places like Electric Fetus in MPLS). I can easily spend two hours flipping through vinyl, typically leaving with albums that were not on my mind when I went in the door.
I really miss going to a video rental place and just wandering, picking up staff recommendations and the occasional DVD title that just looks interesting. I stumbled into a lot of good movies that way. I was not buying movies, but renting them and had a couple of go-to places with great staff who loved movies and had great recommendations.
Same goes for books. At a physical book store or library, I can browse, wander, ask for recommendations. Good book stores still understand this and hire book lovers instead of minimum wage shelve-stackers.
I really don't buy that many books on Amazon, but I read a lot and I do most of my retail shopping online.
Here's the thing - for a book lover, being able to pick up the book and flip through it is a sensory experience. Being able to read a random passage or just sit down with the first chapter is another experience. And before Barnes & Noble got way too corporate, they tended to hire very informed readers - you could go and ask for recommendations from knowledgeable booksellers. I know a few of the employees at the local B&N even had their own groupies - people who would come in every month or so and ask them for their recommendations.
If you know exactly what you want, amazon is great. If you want to take your time browsing the options and discussing them with a live person, a bricks-and-mortar store is the answer. Or the library, but the librarians are usually pretty busy at the one near me.
Not only that but the next person is buying a book that’s been pawed over for hours. Ew.
And to me, that makes them used books. I'm not paying retail price on a used book. I know many people who feel this way. Borders and B&N have struggled with this. Sure it's great to make a relaxing, inviting atmosphere, but at the same time it's not your home or a library.
Amazon is easy but something to be said about browsing books...I can get into a focused state and ignore happenings around me. Plus you can really evaluate the book...online orders for books leave you disappointed at times...especially if you can't get past page 10 or so...
Oh, maybe because of not having to focus on what's right in front of us for a change. It's a time to widen our view. Think about it. At one time we saw the whole book. Now we see a single page on a web site. At one time we went through card catalogs and saw other titles while we did it. Now we only see what we're looking for. At one time we used to see the whole clock. Now all we see is a moment in time on a digital clock. We seem to have lost our ability to see the whole picture around us while we search for something else.
When you go to a bookstore, you're looking for one book, but don't you see all the other ones out there, too? Aren't they interesting to you, making you want to read them, too? Don't they pull you in, making you want to browse on the way to get what you originally wanted? If not, I think you've lost something somewhere.
Besides, it feels magical being in a bookstore.
Great post as usual, RR. Food for thought re not seeing "the whole picture" anymore. I have to use Kindle since there are no libraries here---my former haunts. On my Kindle, there are no page numbers, nor the name of the book or author, so I often forget what title I'm reading. I do appreciate it, but it's a very different tactile experience. I don't really want to take it out to the beach, either....
Re clocks---excellent point too. I once worked with a 20-something girl who readily admitted without shame, that she had never learned to read an analog clock.
I'd love to have a bookstore here to browse in. All we have is old paperbacks traded back and forth amongst ourselves, LOL. We pass books on, rather than store them on "dusty bookshelves". Now my concert DVD's I will watch 100 times!
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