Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Barnes and noble is not and never has been a cozy bookshop that steers readers to good, fun reads. Rather, they and Borders were the reason why thousands of cozy family owned bookshops went out of business in the 80's and 90's,long before Amazon even existed.
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Am I the only one who doesn't miss the family owned small bookstore in the slightest? When I was a kid and the first Barnes and Noble opened up in Bellevue WA, it was practically a religious experience to go inside and browse. Forget the mom and pop shop with 100 SF & Fantasy books in a back corner, I was thrilled to go to a store with every title in a series available all at once instead of just the latest one.
Oddly, I feel the opposite about used book stores. I live just north of Portland, and Powell's Books has driven almost all of the small used book stores out of business. The problem with Powell's is that you very rarely encounter a "find" - it's so populated and picked over that you just see zillions of copies of the most popular stuff. (Again, this is mainly the SF&F area....
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