<p>“There’s just something about holding a book in your hands, not to mention the smell of the paper and ink in a new book.”</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>Haha, but it’s comments like these that make me wonder just how much these people actually are reading. I don’t know about others, but I personally read books for their content, not for their olfactory, tactile, and gastronomical sensations
It’s funny, before ebook readers hit the market - you didn’t see people going about sniffing their books! But all of a sudden now people lament the loss of the smell of books!</p>
<p>I guess it’s easy to give up smelling books if one really wanted to, lol. Just like vinyl records.</p>
<p>That said - I DO consider myself a bibliophile. I like hoarding books. But the Kindle hasn’t taken away that habit.</p>
<p>“I don’t think there are any independent book stores in the area that sell new books”</p>
<p>Yeah a lot of people here talking about the benefits of indie new stores over chains, but seriously I just don’t know where these stores they are talk about are! 99.5% of the indie shops I’ve been into in my several-decade life are disgusting and grossly maintained used shops. I’d guess maybe there’s about 1 or 2 decent new indie store per major city. There’s Trident in Boston I can think of. And there’s a lovely bunch of them on Charing Cross Road in London. But the rest I’ve ever been to are the college-campus-y stores. There’s a nice one in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA I know of, and several in NY on the UWS near Columbia. But I seriously have never seen any others.</p>
<p>Last summer, my then almost-15-year old son and I took an amazing trip. Part of that trip was wandering through Vermont. One of the high points of that trip was visiting the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, one of the largest independent bookstores in the country. My son, who adores real books, was in heaven. There was no comparison between this store and a B & N. My son wanted to spend hours in the store which afforded me the time to speak at length with the owner (I believe he was the owner.) He was a real expert in American history and could make recommendations. He said that the people who worked there had to be well-read and able to talk about books. I have talked to people at Borders, etc. who are not well-read. He gave my son a card and told him if he ever wanted advice on what to read on American History to call him. My son picked out a number of books and we had no room in our suitcase. He discounted them and gave us a good price so that the shipping wouldn’t be prohibitive. The selection of books was amazing. </p>
<p>He told me one frustration he has is people who come in, get advice and ideas about what they want and ask questions and then write it all down in front of the staff so they can go home and order on Amazon. Amazon is great, I love Amazon and use it all the time, but there is something magical about a good independent bookstore. My son and I both agreed that if we lived within an hour of that bookstore, we would make regular visits to it. There is no B & N I’m willing to make that kind of drive to. </p>
<p>One other thing about books versus Kindle. Books have a value to them that is different than what you collect on Kindle (and I use Kindle.) My son collects books. He has a library of classic literature that he is carefully building. Seeing your books on a shelf is like seeing good friends. There is something about paging through a book, turning to a favorite passage, knowing where it is, that Kindle can’t match.</p>
<p>That’s because we don’t do it in public. There are some pleasures that are best experienced behind closed doors. ;)</p>
<p>I’ve been known not to buy a book because I didn’t like the typeface or the kind of paper it was printed on. The physical nature of a particular book can definitely add to or subtract from the reading experience for me. One of my reasons for not getting a Kindle is that I really don’t like the font that I’ve seen on it - do you know if it’s possible to change fonts?</p>
<p>Not large stores, but good reads to be found.</p>
<p>And I agree with the whole book smell/feel argument, but I also read ebooks. And the idea of a portable device appeals to me, with the ability to download something right away. Maybe Santa will bring me one of the new Kindles :)</p>
<p>What I do love about Kindle is the instant gratification - want a book, have it within a minute without leaving the house. And the price of the book is great. I use Kindle to read books that I know I will probably only read once. Our house is filled with books and we are running out of space. Kindle is a great space saver. My husband loves it for the dictionary and because he can adjust the font which helps him to see better. It’s funny to me that my 20 year old and my 15 year old will not touch Kindle – they want their books the old-fashioned way. Only my husband and I use it. I dislike the lack of page numbers and not being able to flip back to a section the way you can with a hard-copy book.</p>
<p>On the first and second generation Kindles - you can adjust size, spacing, and words per line. Changing the actual font involved installing an unofficial but apparently easy-to-do and popular “hack”.</p>
<p>The new Kindle that’s coming out this month comes with 3 different fonts natively.</p>
<p>This is my idea of an independent (used) bookstore:
[HOME</a> - Old cookbooks, cook books, out of print cook books](<a href=“http://www.joannehendrickscookbooks.com/]HOME”>http://www.joannehendrickscookbooks.com/)
Scroll down to look at the photographs of the store. I could live in this place. I stumbled on it while walking downtown in NYC and thought I’d died and gone to heaven.</p>
<p>I recently checked out an original edition of a book from a small town library. It was from 1925, and had the original card in the back. It had names filled out like this: ‘Richardson, Miss’, in that old school cursive (another dying art). I saw names that I’ve seen around town as street names, old buildings, etc. I even saw a grandmother of someone I know. This is why I have no interest in a kindle.</p>
<p>On a unrelated note, this book was very small but hardcover. Why are books so big and long now? Most could use at least 30% editing. It’s no wonder that kindles are so popular, who wants to hold one of these huge books or haul them around? I loved this old book, it was maybe 6"x8", very light, beautifully made with a sewn binding, and a pleasure to hold. Unless you’re a Dickens, keep it short please.</p>
<p>Mousegray, you reminded me of another great use for the Kindle – travel. My husband used to take an entire carryon overstuffed with hardback books that could barely be lifted. Of course, he didn’t read them all, but he couldn’t stand the thought of being without them. The Kindle is a godsend for travel.</p>
<p>I don’t know about used bookstores but in terms of independent ones, that’s all we have here. It’s about 45 miles to a chain bookstore. Our town has an independently owned bookstore. They also can order any book you want and have it for you the next day usually. </p>
<p>We don’t have chains of any kind in our town or nearby. No Starbucks. No McDonald’s. And so on. </p>
<p>^I like your local bookstore a lot, soozie, though IME the books I want take several days to get there!</p>
<p>I like all kinds of bookstores - big box, independent and used. In NYC if I’m in the neighborhood I always stop by <a href=“Strand Book Store”>Strand Book Store; 18 miles of books!</p>
<p>Wow, not here. My town has an independent ma-and-pa bookstore (actually they have 2 stores, the other being about 10 miles away). They’re certainly as nice as any B&N, they gift-wrap books for free, they often have autographed copies of bestsellers, they bring in speakers just like a B&N. They have a frequent buyer club so that you can get discounts, just like you do at a B&N. </p>
<p>There’s also a woman-themed bookstore nearby that explicitly focuses on women’s / feminist issues, has a cafe and brings in poets and speakers. </p>
<p>Neither of these are dead or dying by any stretch of the imagination!</p>
<p>My friend the librarian said that librarians find Amazon to be a wonderful reference. It’s the quickest way to look up all the necessary info about practically any contemporary book, along with lots of yummy reviews. </p>
<p>Re, real, live used books: I love opening an old book and seeing an inscription on the flyleaf. “To Rutherford, with much love, on the occasion of his 18th birthday,” or some such. </p>
<p>Also, one of the things that made me fall in love with my husband was his habit of picking up a book, opening it to the middle, pressing the book to his face and inhaling deeply. He swore he could tell the publisher by the smell.</p>
<p>soozie, we were just up there, but it was such a short visit we were having trouble fitting everything in already. Next time I will call though!</p>
<p>Now there’s a used bookstore! (They have new books too.)
Also, they have one of the few public bathrooms in Soho.
Speaking of public bathrooms, B&N have save my ass many a time. As has Starbucks.</p>
