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I live in a non-English speaking country, but where I'm located, there s an Anglaphone community and we do get English-speaking tourists, so a few stores will have an (impoverished) 'English language shelf'. Few and far between are actually English book shops. Their choice is limited, prices are sky high and staff tend to be innocent of anything literature-related and not a little snooty with it.
The Internet has brought my enjoyment of recreational reading back to life. If anything, the online choice is overwhelming, and prices ain't too bad as a rule.
A visit to a bookshop when I still lived in the UK was an outing, an afternoon's vacation. These days, I find a few hours dedicated to browsing on line is just as satisfying -- and seems to achieve a better result. Now able to buy ebooks and read on my 505 has pretty well dimmed all quaint memories of the dusty, somethimes frustrating, brick-and-mortar experience.
I think the secret is, when searching for you next reads, to allow the same time on line that you once spent searching the shelves. Patience is the secret ... remembering that it's worth spending the time to carefully choose titles that are each likely to command the investment of ten or twelve hours of precious leisure-reading time.
Neil
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