[LeeIGarnett]

This post was inspired by comments in another thread. However the rant there being exceedingly inappropriate (not that it is any more here though), I cut and pasted it into it's own station prior to posting. Thus:

As a consummate bookstore browser, I like small independently owned and slightly failing bookstores. The reason why has nothing to do with the "corporatization" of bookselling or any of that psuedo-socialist rubbish. No, the reason is that all of the major bookselling chains have taken the whole "comfort" gimmick entirely too far. The major bookstores have become the most permissive retail space in the country. They're public living rooms really.

Case in point: I walk into Borders a few weeks back and there's some guy, with his shoes off, mouth agape and snoringly asleep in one of the chairs. Who wants to see this? Another time I was browsing through the classics section and there is a gentleman in his forties standing right next to me, slurping down Latte and devouring a pastry dinner from a napkin, pleasantly accompanied by a shower of crumbs and open mouthed chewing. I'm trying to read the description on a study of Demosthenes, while being forced to try not to listen to a man with the social graces of a chimpanzee.

It's awful, the whole lot of these people. The students doing research (there are such things as libraries), the ultimate cheapskates reading newspapers without buying them (you can't find $0.50 in your car?), the books with broken bindings that signal someone had the temerity to read the entire book in the store and then put it back on the rack, the coffee stains on everything (honestly, the country doesn't lack for Starbucks). It's unbearable.

Now that I consider it, it's life imitating marketing. The girl sitting on the floor in front of a shelf of books reading intently with piles of research papers next to her, makes a wonderful image for an advertisement. But when she's leaning against precisely the section of books you drove down there to find a title in and refuses to move, by of all things, citing her constitutional rights...well, the image you'd rather see of her is unmentionable.

Rant concluded.

[SlashRaid]

I must say, you don't say much to often around here, mainly the great links that can be found under your user ID in cool sites... Yet in simple little posts like this, you display why I feel anything posted by you is a most read.

I feel you on the large retail book stores. Good rant!

[LeeIGarnett]

You're far too generous Slash, but thank you. I'll have to be more cautious about what I write considering your expressed attention to it.

In retrospect perhaps I was being unbearably bitter. But there is a certain sort of person who "hangs out" in chain bookstores. This person never seems to buy anything beyond bookmarks & coffee, nor reads anything beyond periodicals. Instead they are just sort of voluntary mannequins for the idea of open retail space as social & cultural haven.

But, ironically despite itself, there is something forced and impersonal about this. The old indie experience was you went to the bookstore and then to the coffee shop somewhere down the street to read and discuss. By combining these two locational experiences the chain stores maximize their revenue capture, but diminish the experience of both. You end up with something that is vaguely unsanitary, extremely noisy, crowded and unpleasant.

Excuse me Miss....might I, umm...

[JainDough]

argh, yes lee i know exactly what you mean! borders, barnes & nobles and the like are the most fustrating places on earth. i'm all for the hole-in-the-wall local book store and equally hole-in-the-wallish coffee shop, i dont like the all in one money sucking powerhouses that try and pass themselves off as quaint little bookstores.

er, yeah, not that i spend unhealthy amounts of time in bookstores or anything...