You raise some good points, but in fairness, back then you may have been stuck with the AZW format for Kindle or even the primitive MOBI. AZW3 (KF8) had been introduced the prior year and was a great improvement but may not yet have been widely available. In any case, I love my Kindle and it’s great for the things I use it for.
IME Kindles work much better after you hack them and install KOReader.
Eh, some things are worth hacking, some aren’t. The “hack” whereby I sideloaded the Google Play store on my Amazon Fire tablet was priceless in opening up a whole new vista of apps. But my Kindle works just fine for my purposes.
LOL, yup.
Yeah, my friend lived in New York, and we would regularly go to this one Virgin… seems like it was a bit south in Manhattan?
Also, I regularly went to Tower Records in Shibuya, Tokyo, probably the biggest record store in Japan at the time (or one of them).
Retail seemed unstoppable back then, man!
Probably the Virgin Megastore in Union Square on 14th. There’s also a Barnes & Noble at the north edge of Union Square that’s still there.
I would guess that Canada’s Chapters carries between 300 and 400 different magazine titles. Some pharmacies might have up to half that. Some grocery stores a fifth of that. Newsstands and Hudson’s News sort of places none of that, since these rarely exist now in Canada, outside of bigger airports.
I haven’t been to the semi-local Barnes & Noble in months. If a magazine has what I want, I subscribe to it. Whiskey Advocate, Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country, Bon Appetit, etc.
As for books, there are hundreds around the house. But I also own a standard Kindle, a Kindle DX loaded with pretty much everything Baen Books ever issued, a Kindle Fire tablet, and Kindle apps on my phone and iPad. I’m never without something to read!
Magazines used to be the salve for my FOROOSTR (Fear of running out of something to read) syndrome. With an iPad, that’s never going to happen now except on a camping trip or a plane. The magazine section at the B&N near me is right next to the in-store Starbucks. Picking out a mag to browse while nursing a cup of joe doesn’t sound like the worst way to while away an hour.
Tower Records in Shibuya is still there, still gigantic.
Wow. That is a big store.
What I remember from being there a few years ago: one whole floor is just J-pop, another whole floor is just K-pop.
Yes, I’m pretty sure that was it!
Really?! I thought it had gone out of business. I was wrong!
Yessir. Bought Beatles and blues CDs there in 1992, 1993 when they were like ¥5,000 apiece, IIRC. Would go there with ¥20-50,000 in cash, since no one in Japan took credit cards at the time (except hotels, more or less). Continued to frequent the store at other times when I lived in Japan, but I haven’t been back there since the early 2000s at the latest.
My local B&N also has a big selection of magazines, and it does feel nostalgic. It’s close to a university, not sure if that means anything. Probably not, I bet a lot college kids have never even seen a print magazine.
One data point about magazines - I have subscribed to Wired magazine for years and years. I still get it. The magazine only comes out every other month, with about 2/3 to 1/2 the number of pages than it used to.
I also have seen a lot of digest-type magazines. A whole magazine from Better Homes & Gardens about cakes. Something from Time all about Princess Diana. Stuff like that can take up the same shelf space year-round.
So while the physical copies of magazines still fill out the racks, the amount of new magazine content produced in a year is still drastically reduced.
We were waiting in line at the grocery store yesterday and perusing the rather dull titles of the magazines on display. My wife remarked, “I miss the Weekly World News.”
We subscribe to several magazines. In theory, the contents have been vetted (unlike the internet), they don’t dry out my eyes (unlike the internet), they can be read in the tub (unlike the internet), and they’re large enough for me to see photo details (unlike the internet).
Today more than ever, America needs Bat Boy