And Rochester used to have lots of bookstores!
The Village Green
The Oxford Avenue Bookstore
Scrantoms (Stationery, but lots of books, too)
Waldenbooks
…and a slew of others whose names I can’t recall. Every other shopping mall had them. Now there’s not even a bookstore at Marketplace Mall, the biggest mall in the area (that used to have two, IIRC.) There used to be a small bookstore in the plaza that now has the Barnes and Noble.
I don’t care if the membership fee is $5. It is insulting to charge a fee to provide a discount, and reeks of the cynical establishment of a profit center based on customers not using the card enough to offset the fee.
Our local B&N is closer to us than the local Borders. I haven’t been to either in a very long time, but if I had my druthers, I’d pick Borders simply because of their breadth: I’ve never had issues trying to find anything there. Their foreign magazine section is larger than B&N’s. They have a bigger discount section (yay!) Last I heard they were trimming down their AV section, so I’m imaging maybe more books? Plus I like the vibe of their in-store cafe more than the Starbucks at B&N.
B&N reminds me of an old library. While that had its charms over Border’s mega-hip-cool vibe, it never strayed from it AFAIK. There’s a lot to be said for a store’s vibe.
I stopped going to B&N last year when I couldn’t get the last 3 books I wanted unless the store ordered them. Amazon actually had the books, but I wanted them right away; one was a study aid for a Japanese language class I take. I ended up getting the books from Amazon, which were less expensive than B&N anyway.
Speaking of language reference books, what the heck happened to B&N’s language reference library? What used to be an entire section comprised of many bookcases is now just one bookcase, and in some stores just two shelves in one bookcase.
Yeah if I really wanted something specific Amazon is the way to go, but browsing at B&N is a great way to find books I didn’t know I needed. Their selection pummels Boarders and they’re all over where I live.
That makes sense. That matches up with my own experiences of Borders v. B&N, but I wasn’t sure if my sample size was big enough, and if they all have similar decor.
Borders is headquartered here in town, and my local Borders is store #1, so I admit to a bit of fondness for them that I don’t usually feel for corporations. A lot of people work for them and it’d be a bad thing for the area if they went out of business. So I’m a little biased in their favor, I admit.
Cool! Thanks, I’ll check that out!
They almost never have what I wanted, and they have lousy prices. After repeatedly not finding what I was looking for at the B&N, which is quite close, I’d inevitably end up driving 3 times as far to get to Borders. After a while I just cut out the middleman.
I get most of my books from Amazon these days, though. Just about the only time I use a brick & mortar bookstore these days is when I need a technical book, and want to look at it more closely than is possible online.
I haven’t stopped going to B&N, but my purchases are WAY down since I got the Kindle. Although I love physical books, the adjustable print size on the Kindle makes a huge difference for me and my bad eyes.
I still browse B&N, both for new items, and things you can’t get on the Kindle (reference books, graphic novels, etc.).
I work in Bergen County, New Jersey - no shortage of Barnes & Nobles around. There are excellent ones in just about every direction - Paramus, Palisades Mall, Clifton. And as some people mentioned upthread, there are excellent ones in the city as well.
There are a few Borders around, but not as many. The closest bookstore to where I work is a Borders, but it’s not as big or as well run as the Barnes & Nobles. The one in Fort Lee, however, is excellent, and the one in the Garden State Plaza is OK but not so convenient. And my absolute favorite of the big box bookstore was a Borders - the one that was at the World Trade Center. I spent a LOT of money there.
When my area store actually closes, till then I’ll continue to treat it as a library with coffee, and read the magazines I mostly am not going to buy.
The closest thing now is Houghton Bookshop. But I really don’t feel it qualifies as “general interest”.
What I’d really like to see is for Talking Leaves (a Buffalo independent) to open a store in Rochester. I really like their stores but I rarely make the drive to Buffalo.
The Kindle is one answer, but thinking about it - I do go around Christmas to buy gifts. When something new isn’t available on the Kindle I’ll go there sometimes, but this last time they didn’t have the new CJ Cherryh, and you know? If they can’t do that much for me, fuck 'em.
I like Borders better. And I get free gift certs for Borders through my Discover Card cashback. Why pay for books at B&N when I can get them for free somewhere else?
[quote=“Lynn_Bodoni, post:82, topic:550676”]
This is valid. Googlevoice is perfect for this. You can sign up and get a phone number and you can pick the area code and the number (from a list) you want. The google voice mail will always go to Voice Mail and you got an easy to remember number
I don’t know where one is. I’m sure there is one in SF, but I can only think of Borders. Either way, I stick to Green Apple Books, our local used bookstore that donated its profits of Going Rogue to the Alaskan Wildlife Alliance.
Just wanted to say I went there today after work and that is a really cool store! They also had tons of movies & TV series on DVD for very cheap and were running a 20% off deal that ended today. I picked up the box set of “Firefly” & the collector’s edition of “Serenity” for $25 total!
Thanks! 
I used to work at a B&N. There were enough malignant, awful people we counted as custmers that I don’t shop there anymore simply because I would never want anyone to think I was one of them. Silly? Absolutely, but I know a number of ex-booksellers who feel the same way. Now I’ve got a Kindle and all temptation to go there has evaporated.
I didn’t really. For most of the time, Borders was the nearest book superstore. About 2 years ago a B&N opened up within a mile of the Borders. While it was slightly more impressive, with 2 stories and a seemingly larger selection, Borders was still slightly more convenient, and also more familiar, so I rarely went to B&N.
Although, I hear Borders in general isn’t doing all that well. Not sure about my local store, except for their downsizing of the music and DVD sections, and seemingly odd moving around of sections…
Man, I hope they don’t close their stores. Now that Waldens closed in February, B&N is the only bookstore within 25 miles of here. Or, more specifically, it’s the only non-used book store. The closest Borders is almost 40 miles from here, so I don’t see myself buying too many books from a brick and mortar store in the future if the B&N stores close instead of changing hands…
After six years, I knew it was time to quit working at B&N when I had an experience that perfectly encapsulated the bookstore experience of America in the year 2010.
A customer come to the store brandishing her iPhone at me. She demanded that I help her locate titles based on half-remembered plot summaries and descriptions such as “it has a blue cover and I saw it on a table here a few months ago.” Each time I found what she was looking for, she would add the item to her Amazon shopping cart on her iPhone, right in front of me.
When I told her that I wasn’t going to be able to provide any further assistance, she had the nerve to get mad at me. No man can be expected to put up with such obliviousness, such entitlement, I thought to myself. Go fuck yourself, lady. Get the hell out of my store.
I called a manager and let him deal with her. He humored her, as managers must do if they want to stay managers, and afterwards I saw him in the breakroom, visibly aged from the encounter, and our eyes met and he took a breath, as if he were about to tell me something. Then he exhaled heavily, the air becoming a long sigh. I turned away. There was nothing to say.
My last day is next Saturday.