I would say, thank God we have chains, but I am doomed to live in a region with moribund chains. I thought of buying last year’s biography of Charlotte Bronte, but you know what? I have already read biographies of the Brontes.Īnd then there are the chain stores. And they have lost their oomph: no more displays or small press books. And what happened to the new fiction and new nonfiction sections? A few new hardbacks are mixed in with the paperbacks, but the new titles are missing. Why? According to hearsay, the landlord of the old building didn’t keep up the maintenance. I love you, Charlotte, but I don’t need another biography of you! A display of copies of Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone, a novel about Louise Brooks, next to a flapper dress. An attractive shelf of the small-press Pharos Editions’ reissues of American classics like Brian Kittredge’s Still Life with Insects. The store’s displays were clever: Dan Brown’s Inferno surrounded by Dante’s Inferno (and the rest of The Divine Comedy). The Bookworm in Omaha used to be a pretty good store, located in a rather pretty strip mall, with trees growing along the side of the parking lot. The indies are often owned by rich hobbyists–tax write-offs, I suppose. It comes down to: what on earth do they have that I want to buy? Support local businesses! Support writers! Where’s my Che Guevara beret? Do they even give their employees health insurance? Well, you can shop for books in London. It’s hip, it’s chic, and, according to all book publications, it’s revolutionary to shop at bricks-and-mortar stores. I’m gobsmacked as to how anyone can keep the second.

I would buy books only at bricks-and-mortar stores.

I would no longer accept “free” books from publishers.

Far cry 2 mortar