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Personally, I love reading books, but I find browsing in a bookstore to be a bad way of finding books to read. Most of the information you get about books is th
by lacker 6y ago
Personally, I love reading books, but I find browsing in a bookstore to be a bad way of finding books to read. Most of the information you get about books is their promotional marketing copy, and looking at the cover. Maybe you get a small amount of information that was written by a bookstore employee, for a small subset of the books at the store. That just isn't very high-quality information about the books. It isn't a great way to absorb information about books.
Far better is reading things online that are written about books. Find someone you respect who recommended a list of books, or find a list of award-winning books. Go through that list, and read some other reviews of them. This is more intellectually engaging and interesting than walking through a physical bookstore.
Plus, when you find a book you're excited by, you can get it for your Kindle and start reading it immediately, rather than waiting until later. This means you can get a book that's a perfect fit for your mood when you're reading it.
- blululu 6y agoOnline reviews are not inherently more trustworthy than the marketing copy on the dust jacket. Online reviews can be bought (for very little money). A publisher can easily astroturf the reviews on their books, making it very difficult to establish the quality of a book from online reviews (search is hard when there is a lot of extraneous information). A good book store will provide recommendations (staff picks), which can be pretty spot on. Having an actual person who loves books giving a recommendation is high quality information.
- lacker 6y agoDon't read the Amazon reviews. Read long-form reviews written by bloggers or book critics. Those reviews are generally better than those written by the staff at a bookstore.
- greenie_beans 6y agoI disagree. Bookstores have people who curate the displays, which helps with discovery. If you go to a reputable bookstore (not a big box like Barnes and Noble), then you’ll probably discover something great. And regarding the “cover doesn’t tell you everything” point...that’s a valid concern, though you can always ask the booksellers about a book and a lot of times they’ll know about it better than a google search or blog.
- mindcrime 6y agoBookstores have people who curate the displays, which helps with discovery. If you go to a reputable bookstore (not a big box like Barnes and Noble), Curious why you're excluding Barnes & Noble? In my experience, the B&N store by me is largely staffed by people who are readers and writers themselves; and they do curate displays and write recommendations, offer verbal recommendations, etc. Maybe other stores are different, but given the B&N near me, I find it to be equal to any of the local independent bookstores in that regard. And with the bonus of a much larger (though sadly shrinking) inventory, and an attached cafe.
- greenie_beans 6y agoi'm admittedly a bookstore snob
- dredmorbius 6y agoEven the chains can have quite excellent staff, though YMMV considerably.
- egypturnash 6y agoHave you... have you never picked up a book in the bookstore, opened it, and started reading? You can do that. Lots of bookstores have comfy chairs scattered all over to invite you to sit down and check out a book that caught your eye.