I miss browsing libraries and book stores

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by darryl

A must, given that presumably there are infinite numbers of books of random characters typed by the infinite number of monkeys hitting random keys which would need to be at least readily identified or preferably excluded altogether.

You're really missing out if you do that: monkey #98451398341 is a tremendous author, IMO.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I have some of the nostalgia you do.

Even the nostalgia isn't what it used to be ...

[BookCat]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Amazon's great for finding a specific book which, to be fair, is what I want to do 95% of the time. It would be nice on occasions, though, to be able to say "What books are available on such-and-such a subject?", and that's where it falls down. One really has to use other resources to answer that question, and then, having obtained a recommendation, find the book by title or author.

Regarding your earlier mention of Shakespeare literary criticism, if I were looking for such a book on Amazon, I would already have researched - via the internet and other books - the specific book I wanted for the particular area of Shakespeare crit I was interested in. I don't regard Amazon to be a research tool.
When I was a Lit student, I used either the books recommended by lecturers, or searched via the uni library system's listings.

I just went to Amazon's Books dept, typed "Shakespeare literary criticism" in the search. The results were mostly plays with commentary, but there were a few lit crit books.
Typing "Shakespeare literary criticism books" into google (without quotation marks) came up with lots of results, one of which was:
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show...eare-criticism

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's precisely the problem with online bookstores for me: that their classification systems are poor.

The other day, for example, I happened to be looking for books on Shakespearean criticism. Such books would be easy to find in my university library: I'd use their Dewey Decimal classification (822.33E, should anyone be wondering ). If I want to look for such books at Amazon, though, there's simply no way to find them.

This is interesting; I view online bookstores as where I go once I know what I want, not where I look to find what I might want. Whereas physical bookstores did double-duty, because a) there weren't tons of other lists of books floating around and; b) you couldn't count on the bookstore to have any random book you decided you wanted, so limiting yourself to what was on their shelves was convenient.

But I'd never think of searching for a broad category like that on Amazon/Kobo/etc. I'd use a generally search engine to search for “best books on Shakespearean criticism”, which would pull up:

http://www.bardweb.net/read.html
https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...books.classics
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show...eare-criticism

Then I'd flip through those, decide what looked good, and go to Amazon/Kobo/etc to buy them (or put them on a wishlist). This decouples the reviews from the person who's profiting from them.

It is a different model, for sure, and I get people who miss browsing the shelves; that was particularly good not just for finding blurbs, but for actually grabbing an interesting looking book and thumbing through it, maybe reading a whole chapter, etc. There were times as a kid I'd worked my way through half a book over the course of a few days visiting the bookstore before deciding I wanted to buy it.

But there are pretty big advantages to the new way, too.

[BookCat]

sjfan: Great minds ....
I think we cross-posted.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by kacir

Even the nostalgia isn't what it used to be ...

For me, the nostalgia is fading...

[HLS]

I go to B&N for the coffee and the cheesecake and not the books LOL But I have known to browse while I am there and if I see something good I buy it on my Nook or Kindle

[Waiting4somethin]

I don’t know if someone said something like this already, but I read mostly philosophy, science and the like, what I like is picking up a book (especially in second hand stores) and reading the back, checking the price, then flicking through the contents to get a feel for the quality of the writing and and objectives of the author. I’ve not really found that online.

I should probably join some sort of specific site.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by dordale

Alohamora--as I mentioned in my above post, www.fantasticfiction.com does a great job of listing series in order.

I was not familiar with this site. Checked out your link, and I'm impressed.

My problem in physical bookstores is that I'll find something that looks interesting, then I'll later figure out that I just read book 4 of a series of 7. Ugh. So now I browse physical bookstores to find author names (most are big name authors, so even this use of a physical bookstore is limiting). Once I have a few "target authors" that I think may be interesting, I go look at "Book Series In Order" and Goodreads to figure out if I got intrigued by some mid-series book. If so, I'll research the books in the series and if I'm still intrigued, I'll get the books in order. This pretty much leaves the physical bookstore out of the loop at that point,as they usually have only a random smattering of the books in a series.

If I happen to have my Fire tablet with me in the physical bookstore, I'll do my research right there in the bookstore (assuming they have WiFi) and if they happen to have the first book of the series that grabbed me, I'll buy it. Most of the time they don't. So they've lost the sale to me. I don't want to read books in random order. With the ease of ordering online, the much better selection, being able to find out the order of a series, and the (usually) better prices ... physical bookstores are becoming less appealing to me. Although I do like to go in them and just wander around looking.

Bookstores are one of the few stores that I can amuse myself for long periods of time by just browsing. You'd think that fact would be good for their sales. But for the reasons I mentioned above, I tend to only buy technical books in stores (those usually don't come in series) and not novels. If you rabidly follow a specific author, physical bookstores would be more appealing, because you'd already have read the older books and are just waiting for the newest one to be released. But that's not how I read.

If when the stores shelved the books, they'd have additional info printed above each major author telling you of their stand-alone and series books, I'd be much more prone to buy from them. Kind of like the way auto parts stores have info posted above the windshield wiper blades so you can pick the correct ones to buy. Even readily available kiosks where you could look up this info yourself would be a help. But in the stores I visit, all the computer lookup stuff is only available to staff. Maybe other stores are different.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by haertig

If when the stores shelved the books, they'd have additional info printed above each major author telling you of their stand-alone and series books, I'd be much more prone to buy from them. Kind of like the way auto parts stores have info posted above the windshield wiper blades so you can pick the correct ones to buy. Even readily available kiosks where you could look up this info yourself would be a help. But in the stores I visit, all the computer lookup stuff is only available to staff. Maybe other stores are different.

Barnes and Noble has some kiosks for customer use. I'm not sure if they provide all the information you mentioned though. I usually just use them to see if the store currently has a book in stock and if so, where is it shelved.

Isn't it funny that in a way you are arguing that what would make a physical book store more appealing is more computers?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Barnes and Noble has some kiosks for customer use. I'm not sure if they provide all the information you mentioned though. I usually just use them to see if the store currently has a book in stock and if so, where is it shelved.

Isn't it funny that in a way you are arguing that what would make a physical book store more appealing is more computers?

Chapters/Indigo have the computer stations for those who don't want to browse the store. I find them useful to see if the store I'm in has the book and if they don't, do any nearby stores have a copy or if there is an ebook version on Kobo.

I agree that it is rather funny that I'm doing at the store what I could have done at home or on my phone/etc. OTOH, my phone doesn't have a 26" screen.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I agree that it is rather funny that I'm doing at the store what I could have done at home or on my phone/etc. OTOH, my phone doesn't have a 26" screen.

And not everyone uses the Internet. My parents, for example, both in their 80s now, are both avid readers, but they don't own a computer and have never used the Internet.

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by HarryT

How would you address the issue I raised in my previous post, Glenn: that of finding books on a particular topic when you don't have any specific books in mind? This really is virtually impossible to do in any of the current online bookstores!

No but good ole Google search works wonders for this. I just did a Google search on "Books on medieval life" I not only got a lot of hits, but I also got suggestions for related searches. I assume other search engines work in a similar manner, but I'm a big fan of Google search.

[JSWolf]

I find that most eBookstores (not publisher sites) are rubbish. Amazon is one of the worst offenders. They all need to revamp their software so it works the way we want. I want to filter out self-published & anything romance. I want to filter out not yet published. I want to be able to choose free eBooks if I want. When I sort by price, I want to filter out anything not of novel length. There's a lot I want to do and yet I cannot do it because these sites are very poor.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

...Amazon is one of the worst offenders. They all need to revamp their software so it works the way we want...

I'm sure Jeff Bezos will hop right on that. He's got to do something to start earning money!