http://www.booksense.com/bs-bin/search_bs
This is a list of all the BookSense bookstores in New Jersey. Hopefully one will be near you, Brachy. BookSense is a sort of union of independent book stores. One of my favorite features they give is a BookSense gift certificate. You can go into any BookSense store and buy a certificate that is good at any other BookSense store, which is nice if you want to give it as a gift for someone who lives far away.
The only bookstore in my town is a glorified news stand that only sells trade paperbacks and anything with Fabio on the cover. And Cliffs Notes. If I want to buy real books (i.e., anything that requires more than a sixth grade education to read), I have to drive 25 miles. AND I LIVE IN THE COUNTY SEAT!!! WE HAVE TWO COLLEGES IN THIS TOWN!!! TWO COLLEGES AND NO FREAKING BOOKSTORE!!! OH, THE OUTRAGE OF IT ALL!!! :mad:
I used to work at B&N; I’ll try to answer your complaines one by one…
Michael Shermer or Martin Gardner.
This must be quite common, in my local B&N store they have UFO magazine and Astrology Today in the science section. As for Skeptic (my favorite) sometimes it’s in Science other times it’s with the political stuff, a few times with the entertainment mags!
B&N is Reading Lite, just a slightly tonier version of the hyped pap you’d see in a large WalMart book section. Borders is a bit better, but only by the slightest increment.
Kayla is right; independent book stores are much better bets when it comes to quality of selection and knowledable management. By and large, they’re owned and run by diehard book people. They know more about the scope of what’s out there than the ad budgets, media exposure and projected publishers “push”.
It drives me nuts to browse very long in a B&N, etc. Of course, I’m an anal librarian who worries about things like adequate cataloging and accurate classification.
My favorite (?) B&N horror story: I was drifting through one and overheard a puzzled mom/son combo asking the desk clerk if they carried The Pearl by Steinbeck.
The clerk directed them back to the jewelery books.
Couldn’t stand it; intercepted them midway and steered them to the literature section.
Grumble.
Veb
From you link, I was able to get a list of the independents in NJ. Not surprisingly, there were virtually no listings for the New Brunswick area - I guess there is a saturation of the BN/Borders/Walden stores plus Rutgers. At least NJ is small and it won’t take me too long to get to the other stores. Thanks again!
Brachy, you’re welcome. Have fun shopping. Remember, these mammoth chains only stay in business and lower the bar for literature in the US only because people shop at them. I think I mentioned this somewhere else, but in my university town, the fabulous local independent bookstore actually put the SuperCrown across the street out of business in about three years. About the time I moved away, a B&N came to town amid MUCH protest, and I suspect that eventually, they will meet the same fate. We are talking an exceedingly loyal clientele. (The bookstore stayed in business while operating out of a tent for several years when their building was destroyed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.)
Marlitharn, neither of the colleges have bookstores? My university has a nice little bookstore that is certainly open to anyone who wants to patronize it, not just students. Most, but not all, of the books are intended for class use, of course, and therefore tend to be more scholastic and less fun, but you never know! There are Science Fiction Lit classes, and Pop Culture Sociology classes, and so forth, that often require reading that appeal to a large audience outside of academia.
Veb, that’s Kyla. Sorry if I sound irritable, but my name is misspelled/mispronounced that way constantly, and I really dislike it. My name is pronounced phonetically, it is not the same as Kayla.
SuperCrown is having monetary problems on the corporate level. The one near me went out of business after only being open for 6 months, and was replaced by a Borders. The local B&N, staffed like most with 17-year-old-zit-faced-no- pubes-double-digit-IQ-snot-nosed-little-punks, annoyed me so much that my first visit to the place has been my only one so far. Now I frequent a few different independents.
No, I’m sorry, Kyla, for messing up your name! My apologies. I didn’t “preview reply” and spotted my typo about 2 seconds after I hit “submit”. ::smacks head:: Honestly, I DO know your name; just got my fingers tangled up on the keyboard at the wrong time.
Slinking away,
Veb
No problem, Veb. Let’s just say that’s a public service announcement.
Not Kayla
Well, hey, I never have any problem with MY local B & N employees not knowing where books are–whenever I go up to the counter to ask, they don’t even bother trying to figure it out for themselves, they just ask the computer.
I haven’t been able to decide whether this is an improvement or not.
“Do you have John McPhee’s new book, the one he won the Pulitzer for? I’m sorry, I don’t remember what the title is.”
“Um, yeah, um, John McPhee…I’m sorry, we don’t list anybody by that name.”
I politely express my disbelief. “You don’t have John McPhee?”
Apparently I’ve gotten lucky and have encountered one of the few employees with actual brains (must be new). She asks hopefully, “Is it maybe spelled differently?”
“It’s M-c-p-h-e-e.”
“Ohh!” Expression of sheer relief on her face as she punches it in.
Hesitantly I inquire, “How were YOU spelling it?”
“M-c-f-e-e.”
Duck, there was a secretary at my old school whose name was spelled like that. I’m sure your person made an honest mistake.
Yeah, like John McFee of the Doobie Brothers.
I’ve noticed the same thing in Books-a-Million.
Rack after rack of “new age” or “occult” stuff.
I had to ask where the “science” books were.
Guess where?
Tucked away on a small rack almost completely obscured–in the GARDENING section.
Kyla: Nope. Private colleges, private bookstores. The bookstore of the college I attended (25 miles away) wasn’t open to the public, either. The public library is okay as long as I don’t want to read anything printed in the last 25 years (or anything that doesn’t have Fabio on the cover). Never been to a B & N; I usually go to Hastings and raid their deep discount bins. Amazing what you can find in those bins. Picked up a huge collection of Wodehouse for nine bucks. It’s sad to live in a town where if I say, “Good country music is an oxymoron,” someone will bristle and snarl, “Who you calling a moron?” It happened, I swear to God.
My local B&N filed their only copy of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test under “Reference” Did I miss something.
Yeah, you know, after I’m done studying for the GRE, I’ve gotta bone up on the next big test, the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.