Discoverability is so, so much better in stores. Amazon is great if you know exactly what you need, or what to compare a few, well-defined options (especially

Discoverability is so, so much better in stores. Amazon is great if you know exactly what you need, or what to compare a few, well-defined options (especially for something like a technical book, where the reviews often highlight subjective things rather than "quality"). For a lot of things, however, I don't know exactly what I want going in. In principle, Amazon's recommender system could work here, but in practice, it hews really closely to authors, series, and topics I've already bought, with a dose of total randomness (what on earth is a "Chinchilla Lava Ledge?"). There's none of the serendipity of looking for one thing and finding something similar but better.