Quote from: tekla on November 20, 2012, 11:41:18 AMMost of what I read - like a paperback every day or so - I leave when and where I finish it for the next person who comes along.

Me, too, actually. I've got a house full of books, but still check books out at the public library all the time.

At one point - toward the tail end of my professor days - I had two rooms full, floor to ceiling.  Losing them was one of the best things that ever happened to me (thought it took me a few years to realize that).  I have about 40 or 50 now, half of them music/songbooks.  After all there are only about 20-30 books I really want at my fingertips - Thomas Merton, Ernesto Cardenal (Cántico Cósmico "Cosmic Canticle" rocks my world), The Tao Te Ching, a bunch of old Greek/Latin philosophy and history along with Lattimore's translation of The Four Gospels and the Revelation, The Illiad and The  Odyssey, , Richard Feynman's Physics Lectures, a few poetry collections, and a few signed books, but just about anything else I want is either on-line or in a library.  Why should I drag it around, and have it accumulate space?

And, unless I'm at home I'm reading throwaway SciFi/True Crime/Mystery stuff.

I love books and owning them. I do not keep soft cover fiction or non-fiction books, but I am very partial to textbooks. I inherited my Grandpa's and my Dad's medicine, biology, and chemistry books. Both of them were physicians, yeah, it is like a family tradition.

I have accumulated books on military sciences, history, physics, and materials sciences. lately I am fascinated by the advances on metallurgy.

They just open a new BnN in my neck of the woods, downtown there is a bunch of small and quint bookstores.

Yeah, books are like panties, you can never have to many of them 

I love books, I read all the time, so much so that I stopped a rehearsal the other day by asking someone to look up a word for me that I didn't know* and everyone just stood there wondering what kind of word was it that I didn't know.  (Neither did they, we all had to look it up).

But all that stuff that we so gradually accumulate weighs us down in the end.  As we go on it seems to be very little - unnoticeable day by day - and even in the end.  Until you don't have it weighing on you and you realize how much all that material stuff not only held you up when you needed to move fast, it also was most likely holding you down too.

Perhaps that's not true for everyone, but when I lost everything and was bumming about it one of the real smart persons around me told me that I had just reached "Instant Buddha Enlightenment " and in time I would realize how light I truly was, and how that lightness translated into real freedom.  She was right.







*Thalassocracy

I stopped reading fiction decades ago, like in the 1980's...waste of time for me.

My reading urges pretty much stopped with transition (except for trans-process related material), but when I had the urge it was almost entirely what might be called "historical" books...books written in the 1920's, or pre-1960, detailing daily life in the US and certain other countries (Germany in particular, pre-WW1 and 2).

The big stores simply had nothing for me. I'd wander in, peruse the selection, maybe buy a picture book "US Army 1950-1990"...drool over the leather bound boxed set of Tolkien's LOTR (knowing full well I wouldn't likely read it again)...

So small, hole-in-the-wall stores were my choice...but their location "system" was horrible. Since I didn't know the names of any books, or their authors, I could only go to the front desk guy and ask, "Hey, do you have any books on daily life in the US, before 1940?"

And he'd say, "Weeeelll...maybe. I don't really know. Why do you want a book like that? What kind of info are you looking to find?"



Jeez, dude, just show me where the books MIGHT be, and I'll look to see if any catches my fancy...

Enter Amazon...I can search for books using concepts, general ideas, and HEY PRESTO I get 5 pages of results...and, the best part is that each selection has "people who looked at or bought this book also looked at/bought this book"...

I've bought more books via the referrals than by my own searching. So, I really don't miss the bookstores.

Amazon is under investigation right now for trying to buy out publishers and bookstores and monopolizing it. I personally will never buy books from amazon...when you buy a book from amazon you are not giving the authors their full royalties. Ive been looking a lot into this

If you want to support an author, go to their website and buy the book through their Amazon (or whatever) link. That way they get the 6-8% affiliate income on top of the royalty.

It is a difficult topic. In Australia dept stores are having financial problems because so many are using on line shopping. I've bought clothes etc from branddirect for 70% less than I can buy it for here. Then I feel guilty for putting someone out of a job.

Then I don't pay (as much) tax on goods on line which is good. But then the Govnt needs the taxes to run the essential services. So am I saving money or deluding myself.

Sorry for the topic drift.

I generally buy about 50%v of my fiction from second-hand bookstores, and recycle most of my new purchases through them eventually.  Lots of interesting stuff in second-hand places.  Due to size difficulties I get a lot of my clothes from Op-Shops too.

Karen.

Quote from: Cindy James on November 26, 2012, 01:45:43 AM
It is a difficult topic. In Australia dept stores are having financial problems because so many are using on line shopping. I've bought clothes etc from branddirect for 70% less than I can buy it for here. Then I feel guilty for putting someone out of a job.

Then I don't pay (as much) tax on goods on line which is good. But then the Govnt needs the taxes to run the essential services. So am I saving money or deluding myself.

Sorry for the topic drift.

Yeah... I'm very wary of anything that potentially displaces worker-bees. 

In relation to the topic - I absolutely love books! Particularly those with light-colored spines!

Nah... I once dreamt of floortoceiling books - but mostly use the library these days...

I don't miss Border's - I mean I'd miss it if it were my bookstore, but it never was, and my favorites are still around.  And the system - or lack thereof - is to me (at least) kind of charming.  It's OK that everything in the world doesn't run by the Dewey Decimal System (particularly when there are better systems like LoC).  I can almost always find what I'm looking for - but then again I don't browse bookstores as much as I lay siege to them.  When I lived in North Beach and I was trying not to spend any money at all (it all went to my kids college) I'd amble down at least once a week (sometimes more) and hide out in the basement of City Lights.  I read most of the poly sci/history/music stuff in 3-4 years.  And people would come down the stairs and ask in a real weird way "Kat?" and having found me (god only know how they were describing me up at the desk) would go "Hey, the guy upstairs said you should know..."  And I usually did.  The owner (who's kinda famous in his own right) would always bring me coffee down in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" world, if he showed up when I was there.  And took lots and lots of my suggestions.  He always said that every bookstore should have a scholar who had the ability to go "no, you don't want that one, you want this one" based on whatever factors were relevant.  As in, 'No, don't read any rock bio book until you've read: No One Here Gets Out Alive.  And once you read that one, you can pretty much skip the rest.  (there is a good book on the Beatles, and one on the Who, and Johnny Rotten's autobiography is funny at least.)  But the best books are either articles/commentary/reviews, or Griel Marcus, who's not really writing about 'bands' or 'artists' but more about ideas.

But what I miss is record stores.  You know with Crunchy McStoner behind the counter, who knew his costumers and his stock/product/inventory and could actually recommend new stuff that you actually liked.