I went to one of the few big bookstores with physical storefronts remaining yesterday. I don’t need to name names. It was not the best experience and I had not realized just how far things had fallen since I last visited large chain bookstores.
Where it used to be shelves upon shelves of books to choose from, their inventory was greatly diminished and nearly half of what remained was only tangentially related to books. Lego. Jigsaw puzzles. Stuffies. Overpriced boardgames. Toys. Journals and bags to carry those journals.
One of their worst sins, in my skewed opinion, was the utter lack of anything but hardcover and QP (“quality paperback”) versions of books; those higher quality, but double-priced variants of the mass market paperback (“MM”). MMs were almost non-existent at the store unless you purchased boxed collections of an author’s work.
Sometimes, you want something on the cheap — not to put on a shelf, but to read and give away. Or resell. Or donate to a Little Library when you are done.
I like having books that you can not feel guilty for “living in”. I care for my books that I like, but I don’t need hoity-toity copies of the modern day penny dreadful.
I went there because I am in the mood to get back into reading as my escape. My only rules are for what I plan to read is that I don’t want anything to heady or too commonplace. One of the problems with shopping online is algorithms. Amazon and others have decided what I should see — so I receive a curated selection of next reads instead of letting me browse by section to see if a title or artwork grabs me enough to read a synopsis. And then, based on the synopsis, grabs me enough to give someone new a read. Or someone I’ve been meaning to try out a read.
Going to a physical store lets me browse without curation, which is becoming a curse of the digital age.
And, while I knew I wasn’t going to find something atypical at such a store, I had expected there to be some variety and some scaling of pricing based on the quality of the book I was purchasing.
Instead, almost everything was $20 (QPs) or $30 (harcovers). And there was very little variety. Even the artwork for most books is starting to feel very samey, with little or nothing to separate one title from the next — some of which is starting to feel very AI-generated, if you ask me.
I typically shop at a used bookstore chain and I regret not going there instead. I might have only found books 2 and 4 of a series of 5, but at least I would have had some variety and maybe even found a diamond in the rough. My main goal for going to the big chain was to take advantage of their organization and relative completeness. But it lacked even that, aside from containing the vast homogeny of Titles That Will Sell. It appears that they don’t even employ store-specific purchasing agents as they did in the past. Again, it felt as if a title might only appear if an algorithm decided it would sell.
Coming home and looking online, even the dread algorithm offered up more interesting reading that what I could find in a physical store. Having worked in a bookstore for a few years, I was saddened by the realization that many physical bookstores are actively making themselves irrelevant by not maintaining a focus on books, and not offering up a variety in either pricing or in selection.
I am reading more lately, for the record.
Currently, I am rereading the Witcher saga to remind myself of the events leading up to the two most recently available books in the series. While the fantasy world of that book includes magic, most of the storytelling is less about the magic than in most fantasy books. The stories are more about the human condition.
I am planning on reading the old penny dreadful that is best known as the tale of Sweeny Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street. And a few other titles from that era.
I also have The Poppy War in my to-read list, a grimdark fantasy based on events during the Song Dynasty in China. I like the idea of a non-European take on the genre. And having a female protagonist. It might not be my cup of tea, but I’ll give it a whirl, especially because it is a free read for me.
I’m mostly looking for “eye candy”, something that doesn’t require much brain power to enjoy, but that doesn’t insult my intelligence either. I’ll probably find something else if I just look around (which I haven’t done much of the past few years).
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