Barnes and Noble

One thing you will hear often in the lovely town I live in is this: "Oh, you should go to Canterbury Bookstore, they're a community store." Canterbury, as you can tell by their snooty name, is a locally owned poetry and fiction store, which also plays local music every now and then and serves some decent desserts. However, their complete and utter lack of decent book selection is not helped by their overwhelmingly haughty attitude, which this passage from their site might help show:

"As you linger here, we hope you'll become swept up into what we call the romance of the bookstore, born from the alchemy of passion for books, genial camaraderie, and the indefinable rhythm within our fanciful space."

I've got your fanciful space.

However, a sufficient quantity of intelligent and/or attractive people continued to hound me to stop going to that soulless pit, that wretched book factory, that Ethiopian-children-grinding-to-make- their-bookmarks store, Barnes & Noble. So, being the diligent, responsible consumer I am, I decided I would go to their little house of genial camaraderie to purchase something right up their alley: Tales of Ordinary Madness by Charles Bukowski. Even I, who knows almost nothing about poetry, have heard of this guy. So I went into their store and immediately my breath was taken away by the indefinable rhythm within their fanciful space. That and the fact that they didn't have my book.

That's right, no book–zip, zero, nada. Was I inept at finding it? No, I asked for help. Was the staff inept? Irrelevant; if it can't be found, it can't be bought. Could I have ordered it? Surely, but putting that much time and effort to just get a book from a fanciful space is about as cool as huffing Glade. Needless to say, I hopped over to B & N and grabbed myself a copy that night.

I probably should describe the shopping experience at Barnes & Noble, but more than likely you have already experienced it yourself, so just relive the experience in your mind, except instead of looking for the book you got, picture yourself strolling through those myriad aisles looking for the rowdiest, meanest genius to ever ruin himself with the sauce. Did I get lost? Of course I got lost. Did I like getting lost? Of course I did. Did I get my book? Of course I did. Was it cheaper than Canterbury? Of course it was. Did I feel guilty? No.

What do I want in a bookstore? Let's make a list, and YOU can choose the things you think are appropriate for your shopping experience:

–Pie.

–Local music you have to pay to see, even though you may just want pie.

–Thousands of books, good god, THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of books, lined up by category like some kind of literary CandyLand.

–The pride of knowing that you are paying extra for a book so you can buy it from someone local. As if you LIKED local people.

–The pride of knowing that you are paying less for a book, because of the magic of wholesale.

All right, I picked pie too. But my point is this: Buying local can SUCK. Just because the store is regional does not mean that the person who runs it is some virtuous little book gnome getting crushed by the man, and just because a store is huge does not necessarily mean that it is evil. That many books IS a good thing and anyone who says otherwise either can't read or owns a shitty little bookstore.

I would like to note, however, that I also am proud to shop at Avol's and The Frugal Muse, two exceptional local stores that sell used books. Just because a store is local doesn't necessitate it sucking, either. Avol's excels in obscure texts that can be placed on your shelf to look smart or get chicks. (I also should note that Avol's sells "I'd rather be reading Bukowski" bumper stickers. Eat it, Canterbury.)

The Frugal Muse is not only the fairest in town for buying used books off of you when you need more quick cash to support your variety of habits, but with its scads of books at great prices and a small cache of used CDs and video games, it's a hip place to blow an afternoon.

Basically, I go to the bookstore that offers the best options–for some weird, kooky reason, books are the highest priority on my scale, price coming in second and pie lagging behind, if even in the same race.

Fanciful space, good god.

— Dan Norton)