14 ms·

Love the smell of old books? This bookseller would like you to leave

120 points by diodorus 4y ago

haspoken 4y ago
https://archive.ph/ojDtk https://archive.ph/ojDtk
xpe 4y ago
A joyously insulting read. The author of the memoir (Kociejowski) is the kind of person you love to skewer others, as long as you are spared from his charming wrath.
- drewcoo 4y ago
  I used to manage a used book store. Maybe he seems insulting to you but he seems entirely correct to me.
  - skyyler 4y ago
    Insults have the capacity for correctness.
    - xpe 4y ago
      That's when they can really hit home.
  - sushid 4y ago
    Is that really true? I do love the smell of old books but I never would proclaim that out loud to a bookstore owner. I do actually purchase used books though when I visit stores. In fact went to a Bookoff and bought a book last week.
    - vba616 4y ago
      Saying "I love the smell of old books" is not compatible with my basic assumptions about a reader, like that they have been around a lot of old books. Ordinary mold/mildew is not a good smell, triggers allergies, and nobody in their right mind "loves" it. Books get stored in places that get high humidity or flooded, and the results are horrible and toxic. If you order random used books off the internet these days there's a good chance they have a trace of mold smell. On the other hand, non ordinary book odors vary widely, may be from decay, or the binding glue, (the glue decaying?) or who knows what, so how could you generically love them all even if you have arbitrarily peculiar preferences? I admit that the above is mostly not based on memories of bookstores, but of a household full of books.
      - sushid 4y ago
        To clarify, I was asking if people who say "I love the smell of old books" really are window shoppers or if they actually do buy book in the parent commenter's experience. I personal "enjoy" it in the sense that I associate it with used bookstores. I wouldn't want a candle scent of it in my room by any means.
  - xpe 4y ago
    It is criticism based on life experience, delivered with English wit. Also insults and truth are not mutually exclusive.
- AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
  I'm sympathetic to the owner's plight, as I imagine it's frustrating when you've got a bunch of customers who frequently stop into your establishment to profess how much they love your product, while failing to ever actually purchase your product. This is something particularly common with books/reading, where it becomes more of a performative act, to demonstrate to everyone else how intellectual/educated you are.
  - drewzero1 4y ago
    Recently I've realized that if I want the local businesses I love to continue to exist, I need to be willing to give them some of my money. I've definitely developed a better relationship with a few local business owners by purchasing there regularly. A lot of stuff may be listed cheaper online, but it's important to remember that customer service, atmosphere, and convenience* also factor into the price. I'd rather pay a small premium to enjoy a pleasant shop than pay for shipping from somewhere online. *Convenience cuts both ways. I don't have Prime or anything like that so a local shop is the only way to get something same-day, but I recognize that I do have to leave the house and probably drive somewhere.
    - TylerE 4y ago
      Plus once you’ve established that relationship, you can often get effectively competitive prices anyway, either in the form of the occasional freebie, or, especially in items with significant margin, like musical instruments, substantial discounts off sticker.
  - vba616 4y ago
    >This is something particularly common with books/reading, where it becomes more of a performative act I want to hear about your personal experience of this. If you have to imagine what bookstores are like, I assume you formed your opinion of readers elsewhere. Libraries? I'm trying to imagine a performative reader in a library. Or school?
    - AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ycombinete 4y ago
  Some of this reminded me of Orwell’s _Keep the Aspidistra Flying_
prpl 4y ago
Black books, anyone?
- dvtrn 4y ago
  Heh I absolutely adore that show, and now that you’ve mentioned it, and after reading this article, I’m off for a rewatch :)
- headwayoldest 4y ago
  All this time I thought it was a comedy, turns out it's a documentary.
dannyphantom 4y ago
In my hometown, there is a long-standing bookstore that an elderly woman owns; she's been old since I was a child and she is old now. She rejoices when people come into her shop and her first instinct is to approach you and ask if you'd like a (free) coffee or tea, not of great quality, but it's a precursor to her second habit: she has a conversation with her guests and through that time she is carefully studying you. After a few minutes she will give you a smile and say "I've got the perfect book for you", she'll retreat into her shop and come back to you with a book in hand and only ask for a dollar or two in return. She was the town's "book lady" or "just the bookstore everyone goes to" so it's obviously been a disappointment when that wasn't the case everywhere as I've moved on and visited other stores; but it's impressions like that, as a child and growing up with that you are left with an idea on how booksellers are supposed to be like because it's what you grew up with as the normal thing; but alas the world is large and I'm sure this author has his reasons. Edit: wanted to add an example of how fantastic this woman was at figuring people out; I remember going in around maybe ~8-10 years old and she picked 'Edward's Eyes' [1] for me; it had a profound impact on me as a child as it was so similar to my own life, even sharing the same first name as the narrator of the book. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/121419.Edward_s_Eyes https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/121419.Edward_s_Eyes
- NomadicDev 4y ago
  Oh my god, you grew up in a fairytale :O I love stories of little quirky & fable-like people who are known as "that X person", and they seem to be a master at whatever X is. Creates a real charming atmosphere wherever these people exist.
  - lagrange77 4y ago
    I imagine some of us are those kind of X persons in other peoples lives, where X ∈{Computer, Science, Internet}.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- 4y ago
LesZedCB 4y ago
this is the necessary corollary to upholding "book culture." if you believe books are a cultured activity for those with high intelligence, empathy, work ethic, desire to learn, or other high-brow drive, there will necessarily be those who only engage in reading aesthetically. instead, let it be what it is: a pastime. no higher or lower than reddit or tv or mountain biking. sorry, writers.
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  you can still rank ways to spend your time. try it. some pass times are more fulfilling than others. reddit and tv, i imagine, are at the bottom of the list for most people. meanwhile, i know for myself that i almost never regret time spent reading. can’t say the same for the spent on hn/netflix. so i don’t think it does much good to equate ways to spend time except as a coping mechanism for time poorly spent.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    > fulfilling Let us not forget duty.
  - zemvpferreira 4y ago
    In that case you've had good luck with the books you've read. There are tons and tons of books that contribute much less to your life than a good subreddit, I can promise you that. Some books can damage you for life with ideas that are only sound absent other people to talk about with. Give the wrong teen a copy of Mein Kampf and watch what happens. I personally love film and books but these days I love reddit and youtube more. But like when you read good books, it will not do to let the gatekeepers guide your passive atention. You must hunt the prey, break the bones and suck out the marrow yourself. You'll find plenty of emotional and intellectual sustenance on digital mediums if you put in the work. Even on hacker news!
- mdp2021 4y ago
  I cannot even quote those blasphemies. Sure, if you believe you are born to yell at cars or whatever, the day you will do something different will be for the enjoyment of a duly exceptional vacation. But if you do not see the value of something, all chances are the issue is with your "eyes". Incidentally: among the well recognized functions of books, they are there to have selected, better company that those in mentioned "social networks gone bad" - even taking special cases into account. (Of course, you have to be able to perceive what "better" is.)
crispyambulance 4y ago
Microorganisms, oxidation and acidity are responsible for that smell. It's the smell of various forms of decay! https://phys.org/news/2009-12-clues.html https://phys.org/news/2009-12-clues.html
- jackling 4y ago
  Wonder if there's any evolutionary reason people really like the smell. I would think it would be the opposite.
  - darkerside 4y ago
    Positive association
  - himinlomax 4y ago
    Not all forms of decay are harmful. For example, herbivore feces are mostly harmless, and indeed cow/horse dung does not smell too bad, particularly compared to human or dog shit.
- anewpersonality 4y ago
  Do we need plastic books?
bigbillheck 4y ago
If the store doesn't have a restroom I can see why: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariko_Aoki_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariko_Aoki_phenomenon
- autoexec 4y ago
  Weird. I've never experienced that. Not in Japanese bookstores or American ones. Maybe folks who spend a lot of time in bookstores and libraries over years become immune to it?
  - jandrese 4y ago
    I can't say I have either. Maybe it requires a specific gene activation? Like 5% of the population has the "bookstore pooper" mutation?
  - bigbillheck 4y ago
    In my life I've spent an awful lot of time in bookstores and libraries and have developed no such immunity.
- daveslash 4y ago
  Never heard of this. But I experience this almost every time I enter the door to my own home after being away for more than 6 hours. I won't have any inkling of feeling prior to entering, but as soon as I do.... 15 seconds later I know where I'm now headed. Edit: My home is not a bookstore, but I do have a non-trivial personal library in my front room. Coincidence?
  - alpaca128 4y ago
    That's probably just a habit. It's the same for me when I enter the bathroom in the evening before going to sleep.
- pacaro 4y ago
  Well, this explains something. When my daughter was very young I used to take her to bookstores as an activity (the kids sections are often setup like play spaces) and without fail she'd fill her diaper. Juggling a kid with a full diaper while trying to buy some books and decide whether to risk the nearby public restrooms (also a shooting gallery) or try to wait to get home before changing her. Now I have an explanation
arein3 4y ago
Gatekeeping "true book enjoyers". Nice bait.
- jandrese 4y ago
  Seems more like a cranky bookstore owner who was grouchy at every person who came in but didn't buy a book. You can imagine him yelling "this is not a lending library!" several times each day.
ineedasername 4y ago
>He sold a copy of “Finnegans Wake” to Johnny Depp This is one of the most fascinating books that I know of. I'm pretty well convinced that the world population of people who have read more than the very beginning and very end probably numbers roughly the count of my fingers and toes combined. Although I think many people I also think the the only person who ever really understood the book was James Joyce himself. Fluency in multiple languages down to idiomatic expressions and deep etymology seem like strict requirements if you have never occupied the meatspace between Joyce's ears. Any small portion seems somewhat comprehensible in its highly local environment, and a bit funny or witty in how it's written. But then it breaks down when attempting to connect that piece to the wider whole. And it all makes me feel like I'm reading extremely familiar words whose meaning I can't quite remember. In refreshing my memory about it before commenting here it made me laugh to see that even the best Wikipedia can say about what goes on in the book is that readers have mostly reach a consensus (but only a consensus!) about normally trivial matter of fact such as the cast of characters, a little less so the plot, but that many other important details amount to poorly mapped terrain. And because I was born with the usual amount of fingers andntoes, if I met a random person in passing, and they claimed to have read the book completely, I would look at them with as much belief as if they had said "I'm a very powerful leader of one of the G20 nations". Actually I might believe the G20 claim a bit more because I would consider it less likely for someone to make a claim like that when it could so easily be proven false if it was not true. If I had not encountered the book long ago then I might believe it to be the output of an extremely oddly trained gpt-3 model. I don't mean that to be an insult to the book, it's just the best comparison I can think of to characterize it's contents in modern terms. This is how fascinating Finnegan's Wake is as a literary work.
- rjbwork 4y ago
  Reading Joyce is like listening to Prisencolinensinainciusol. It seems like you should be understanding and comprehending it. All the bits are there. You know what the words/syllables respectively are, but you just can't quite seem to grok any meaning out of it.
- number6 4y ago
  I have this book laying around here. Read the first page and did not understand anything. Quarks are named after a line in this book so I thought: well give it a try. Do you have any idea how to tackle this?
GnarfGnarf 4y ago
Most of the used booksellers I've known are mavericks and misanthropes who love their books, resent parting with them, and run a bookstore because it's a job where they don't have to report to, or work with others. Unfortunately, used book stores are a vanishing breed.
ARandomerDude 4y ago
I have a large-ish library (by personal standards) that spans multiple rooms in my small house. When I invite people over I will, without fail, get one of two responses: 1. "Wow, have you read all these books?" means "I never read books." 2. Scans shelves..."Oh that's a great book...I haven't heard of this author – any good?" means "I read a lot." I'm used to the books and don't get any pride from them but it's amazing how quickly you can tell how literate someone is by their behavior in even a small library.
- OJFord 4y ago
  I don't know, I like reading, I like books, and I like owning the books I am reading or have read (especially if I liked them). But I do have many books I haven't (yet) read, or have only partially read (especially textbooks and some biographies). It's a hobby I don't spend as much time on as I'd like. I have.. hundreds (I mean that literally - not tens, nor thousands; I don't know exactly the number) of books, a small number across a few rooms. Certainly fewer than you. Were I in your house, I might be inclined to ask if, like me, you slightly veer into ~hoarding~ collecting rather than having read them all; perhaps telling yourself you certainly will, as the backlog only grows ever longer, or whether I should feel ashamed because you actually have read them all and it's a much larger hoard.
  - ARandomerDude 4y ago
    I have many books I haven't read. When I am exploring a subject, I'll often hear a subject matter expert say "the go-to text on this is $BOOK." At that point, I buy the book if I have a reasonable expectation that I'll actually read it. Some books I only reference or read partially if the subject is pretty well divisible. I read a few tens of books per year but my queue is a couple years long. No big deal, I don't feel pressure to get through it.
  - groby_b 4y ago
    It is not hoarding - it's aspirational collecting :) Most people who love books have entire stacks that they haven't read yet. Because your love means there are just so many of them you'd like to have in your life. And the fact that even on a low income, the cost of reading often vastly outstrips the cost of buying (in terms of time) means that sometimes, you'll choose to collect more instead of finish what you have. Is it smart? I don't know. I like to think that the unread books are like way posts showing me the direction into unknown terrain I'd like to explore but can't just yet. I have not seen the dragons, but the book reminds me "there be dragons". The joy is in knowing that the world is so much bigger than anything you deeply know. Maybe that's hoarding. Maybe it's defining your place in the world. Maybe it's the comfort that you could know in a moment, if you but chose to. If it gives you joy, who cares :)
B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
"[...] sense that there I’ll find a book, as yet unknown to me, which to some degree will change my life." In retrospect, and having felt that way, I realize that is an unreasonable hope. Very bad odds, if you even think it out for a bit. On the other hand, interesting entertainment is often one lucky find away.
- antonvs 4y ago
  After that realization, I pretty much gave up browsing bookstores, long before bookstores "died". Although part of the issue is that mainstream bookstores perform curation based almost purely on popularity, which makes them terrible places to find much more than variations on Oprah's latest book club selection.
fauria 4y ago
At El Celler de Can Roca (3 Michelin Star restaurant in the northeastern coast of Spain) you can not only smell old books but also "eat" them: https://www.finedininglovers.com/article/roca-brothers-are-quite-literally-cooking-books https://www.finedininglovers.com/article/roca-brothers-are-q... The Roca brothers managed to create a device (Rotaval) used to distill essences from different objects, after rubbing them with fat and dissolving it in alcohol. Low quality video from the device (couldn't find any better): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blB7VYQCxZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blB7VYQCxZw
TheDesolate0 4y ago
Bullshit like this is why I cancelled my NYT sub.
- pklausler 4y ago
  Hiring a climate science denier for the opinion page was my last straw.
- zizee 4y ago
  Book reviews caused you to cancel your subscription? Why?
arthurcolle 4y ago
There seem to be no book stores in Miami like at all anymore, it is pretty sad. Apparently Books & Books was a thing before but no longer exists other than the sun umbrellas outside where they used to be.
- pjmorris 4y ago
  Your comment shocked me. I checked and it looks like the Books & Books on Lincoln Road is gone but the web holds out hope that the main store in Coral Gables is still there. I hope that's true.
Andaith 4y ago
> Also one must be ruthless with those who ask, “What is the most expensive book you’ve got here?” Often it is the male of the species trying to impress the female. That's wild to me. What a weird thing. Is this primarily an Americanism? One of the things I miss the most about the UK is the bookshops, the second-hand bookshops, the weird one-pound-per-book barns in random villages, the book festivals, the charity shops where every book is a pound. The idea of caring about, or wanting, a _book_ because of how expensive it is, is just so genuinely alien to me that I've gotten stuck on that sentence.
- jeshin 4y ago
  yeah, a book is a particularly strange object to do that with. It's not like it's going to have gold rims, automatic spill prevention and drop parachute, and self-reading abilities. it's probably going to be some textbook
  - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
    Well, we have the technology. It's only a matter of time until someone publishes such a book.
- bobsmooth 4y ago
  Is it any more strange than buying the most expensive car or the most expensive wine?
  - GoodbyeMrChips 4y ago
    Eh? One buys sports cars and wine for enjoyment. The idea of buying the most expensive offering for its own sake is laughable. One doesn't order an expensive claret to drink with fish!
- dionidium 4y ago
  "Expensive" in this case is a proxy for rare/unique/desirable/collectible/interesting, since those are the properties that would make a book expensive. It's actually a totally normal and reasonable question.
dhosek 4y ago
Back in the late 80s/early 90s, I used to travel a few times a year to give LaTeX seminars and one of the things I would do was get the local yellow pages and (don’t tell anyone) rip out the pages that listed all the local bookstores and then I would proceed to go to every single one of them. Boulder, Colorado had a great selection of bookstores. I remember going into one bookstore and being puzzled when I not only couldn’t find any of my favorite authors on the shelves, but I had never heard of any of the authors. It wasn’t until I left the store and turned around and looked at the store again that I realized it was an adult bookstore (I think it was named something like Kitty’s Books and the signage as to its nature was subtle). Another fun moment was visiting a bookstore/cafe/literacy center in New Orleans and picking up a self-published game there called Cartoon Wars on the recommendation of the clerk on duty. I flipped through it back at my hotel room and realized it was created by someone I went to college with. When I visited the UK, I came home with so many books, I had to declare my purchases at customs. Fortunately, I didn’t have to pay any import duty on them.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  > Another fun moment was visiting a bookstore/cafe/literacy center in New Orleans and picking up a self-published game there… If you are referring to Iron Rail I am afraid it has been closed for a while. Neutral Ground is still around but not a bookstore.
  - dhosek 4y ago
    I’d have a hard time remembering what it was called—this was 31 years ago. I remember loving the concept and wanting to open something similar in Southern California (all I lacked was the time, money and ability). Nowadays, I support the somewhat similar in mission Open Books here in Chicago (whose main bookstore is in the same building as my current employer). What I remember was that their main clients for the literacy services were crew members from cargo ships.
    - selimthegrim 4y ago
      Ah this sounds like the Norwegian Seamen's Church (closed in 2018)
stevomacdaddy 4y ago
the smell of old books is just the breath of everyone who has ever read the book stuck between the pages.
animal531 4y ago
I really love books, but I'm also highly allergic to old ones. Only a few minutes of exposure and my nose will run like a faucet. Fortunately these days I have my Kindle so I can still collect and read books as I want to.
rramadass 4y ago
Money quote: “the book trade is a floating world for people of intelligence unsuited for anything else.” I think this is also applicable to a lot of us who like to read a lot.
the-mitr 4y ago
If you visit Bangalore, India you should visit Blossoms book store on church street. They have 2 shops nearby stacking books on all topics that you can think of, used and new. The used section is very interesting and the books are quite cheap too. Whenever I visit Bangalore, I keep one entire day for blossoms, and even that is not sufficient, you still yearn to take more books or look at them, browse racks full of rare, unheard of books along with bestsellers and classics.

120 points by diodorus 4y ago

https://archive.ph/ojDtk https://archive.ph/ojDtk

xpe 4y ago

A joyously insulting read. The author of the memoir (Kociejowski) is the kind of person you love to skewer others, as long as you are spared from his charming wrath.

drewcoo 4y ago
I used to manage a used book store. Maybe he seems insulting to you but he seems entirely correct to me.
- skyyler 4y ago
  Insults have the capacity for correctness.
  - xpe 4y ago
    That's when they can really hit home.
- sushid 4y ago
  Is that really true? I do love the smell of old books but I never would proclaim that out loud to a bookstore owner. I do actually purchase used books though when I visit stores. In fact went to a Bookoff and bought a book last week.
  - vba616 4y ago
    Saying "I love the smell of old books" is not compatible with my basic assumptions about a reader, like that they have been around a lot of old books. Ordinary mold/mildew is not a good smell, triggers allergies, and nobody in their right mind "loves" it. Books get stored in places that get high humidity or flooded, and the results are horrible and toxic. If you order random used books off the internet these days there's a good chance they have a trace of mold smell. On the other hand, non ordinary book odors vary widely, may be from decay, or the binding glue, (the glue decaying?) or who knows what, so how could you generically love them all even if you have arbitrarily peculiar preferences? I admit that the above is mostly not based on memories of bookstores, but of a household full of books.
    - sushid 4y ago
      To clarify, I was asking if people who say "I love the smell of old books" really are window shoppers or if they actually do buy book in the parent commenter's experience. I personal "enjoy" it in the sense that I associate it with used bookstores. I wouldn't want a candle scent of it in my room by any means.
- xpe 4y ago
  It is criticism based on life experience, delivered with English wit. Also insults and truth are not mutually exclusive.
AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
I'm sympathetic to the owner's plight, as I imagine it's frustrating when you've got a bunch of customers who frequently stop into your establishment to profess how much they love your product, while failing to ever actually purchase your product. This is something particularly common with books/reading, where it becomes more of a performative act, to demonstrate to everyone else how intellectual/educated you are.
- drewzero1 4y ago
  Recently I've realized that if I want the local businesses I love to continue to exist, I need to be willing to give them some of my money. I've definitely developed a better relationship with a few local business owners by purchasing there regularly. A lot of stuff may be listed cheaper online, but it's important to remember that customer service, atmosphere, and convenience* also factor into the price. I'd rather pay a small premium to enjoy a pleasant shop than pay for shipping from somewhere online. *Convenience cuts both ways. I don't have Prime or anything like that so a local shop is the only way to get something same-day, but I recognize that I do have to leave the house and probably drive somewhere.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Plus once you’ve established that relationship, you can often get effectively competitive prices anyway, either in the form of the occasional freebie, or, especially in items with significant margin, like musical instruments, substantial discounts off sticker.
- vba616 4y ago
  >This is something particularly common with books/reading, where it becomes more of a performative act I want to hear about your personal experience of this. If you have to imagine what bookstores are like, I assume you formed your opinion of readers elsewhere. Libraries? I'm trying to imagine a performative reader in a library. Or school?
  - AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ycombinete 4y ago
Some of this reminded me of Orwell’s _Keep the Aspidistra Flying_

prpl 4y ago

Black books, anyone?

dvtrn 4y ago
Heh I absolutely adore that show, and now that you’ve mentioned it, and after reading this article, I’m off for a rewatch :)
headwayoldest 4y ago
All this time I thought it was a comedy, turns out it's a documentary.

dannyphantom 4y ago

In my hometown, there is a long-standing bookstore that an elderly woman owns; she's been old since I was a child and she is old now. She rejoices when people come into her shop and her first instinct is to approach you and ask if you'd like a (free) coffee or tea, not of great quality, but it's a precursor to her second habit: she has a conversation with her guests and through that time she is carefully studying you. After a few minutes she will give you a smile and say "I've got the perfect book for you", she'll retreat into her shop and come back to you with a book in hand and only ask for a dollar or two in return. She was the town's "book lady" or "just the bookstore everyone goes to" so it's obviously been a disappointment when that wasn't the case everywhere as I've moved on and visited other stores; but it's impressions like that, as a child and growing up with that you are left with an idea on how booksellers are supposed to be like because it's what you grew up with as the normal thing; but alas the world is large and I'm sure this author has his reasons. Edit: wanted to add an example of how fantastic this woman was at figuring people out; I remember going in around maybe ~8-10 years old and she picked 'Edward's Eyes' [1] for me; it had a profound impact on me as a child as it was so similar to my own life, even sharing the same first name as the narrator of the book. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/121419.Edward_s_Eyes https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/121419.Edward_s_Eyes

NomadicDev 4y ago
Oh my god, you grew up in a fairytale :O I love stories of little quirky & fable-like people who are known as "that X person", and they seem to be a master at whatever X is. Creates a real charming atmosphere wherever these people exist.
- lagrange77 4y ago
  I imagine some of us are those kind of X persons in other peoples lives, where X ∈{Computer, Science, Internet}.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
4y ago

LesZedCB 4y ago

this is the necessary corollary to upholding "book culture." if you believe books are a cultured activity for those with high intelligence, empathy, work ethic, desire to learn, or other high-brow drive, there will necessarily be those who only engage in reading aesthetically. instead, let it be what it is: a pastime. no higher or lower than reddit or tv or mountain biking. sorry, writers.

hombre_fatal 4y ago
you can still rank ways to spend your time. try it. some pass times are more fulfilling than others. reddit and tv, i imagine, are at the bottom of the list for most people. meanwhile, i know for myself that i almost never regret time spent reading. can’t say the same for the spent on hn/netflix. so i don’t think it does much good to equate ways to spend time except as a coping mechanism for time poorly spent.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  > fulfilling Let us not forget duty.
- zemvpferreira 4y ago
  In that case you've had good luck with the books you've read. There are tons and tons of books that contribute much less to your life than a good subreddit, I can promise you that. Some books can damage you for life with ideas that are only sound absent other people to talk about with. Give the wrong teen a copy of Mein Kampf and watch what happens. I personally love film and books but these days I love reddit and youtube more. But like when you read good books, it will not do to let the gatekeepers guide your passive atention. You must hunt the prey, break the bones and suck out the marrow yourself. You'll find plenty of emotional and intellectual sustenance on digital mediums if you put in the work. Even on hacker news!
mdp2021 4y ago
I cannot even quote those blasphemies. Sure, if you believe you are born to yell at cars or whatever, the day you will do something different will be for the enjoyment of a duly exceptional vacation. But if you do not see the value of something, all chances are the issue is with your "eyes". Incidentally: among the well recognized functions of books, they are there to have selected, better company that those in mentioned "social networks gone bad" - even taking special cases into account. (Of course, you have to be able to perceive what "better" is.)

crispyambulance 4y ago

Microorganisms, oxidation and acidity are responsible for that smell. It's the smell of various forms of decay! https://phys.org/news/2009-12-clues.html https://phys.org/news/2009-12-clues.html

jackling 4y ago
Wonder if there's any evolutionary reason people really like the smell. I would think it would be the opposite.
- darkerside 4y ago
  Positive association
- himinlomax 4y ago
  Not all forms of decay are harmful. For example, herbivore feces are mostly harmless, and indeed cow/horse dung does not smell too bad, particularly compared to human or dog shit.
anewpersonality 4y ago
Do we need plastic books?

bigbillheck 4y ago

If the store doesn't have a restroom I can see why: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariko_Aoki_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariko_Aoki_phenomenon

autoexec 4y ago
Weird. I've never experienced that. Not in Japanese bookstores or American ones. Maybe folks who spend a lot of time in bookstores and libraries over years become immune to it?
- jandrese 4y ago
  I can't say I have either. Maybe it requires a specific gene activation? Like 5% of the population has the "bookstore pooper" mutation?
- bigbillheck 4y ago
  In my life I've spent an awful lot of time in bookstores and libraries and have developed no such immunity.
daveslash 4y ago
Never heard of this. But I experience this almost every time I enter the door to my own home after being away for more than 6 hours. I won't have any inkling of feeling prior to entering, but as soon as I do.... 15 seconds later I know where I'm now headed. Edit: My home is not a bookstore, but I do have a non-trivial personal library in my front room. Coincidence?
- alpaca128 4y ago
  That's probably just a habit. It's the same for me when I enter the bathroom in the evening before going to sleep.
pacaro 4y ago
Well, this explains something. When my daughter was very young I used to take her to bookstores as an activity (the kids sections are often setup like play spaces) and without fail she'd fill her diaper. Juggling a kid with a full diaper while trying to buy some books and decide whether to risk the nearby public restrooms (also a shooting gallery) or try to wait to get home before changing her. Now I have an explanation

arein3 4y ago

Gatekeeping "true book enjoyers". Nice bait.

jandrese 4y ago
Seems more like a cranky bookstore owner who was grouchy at every person who came in but didn't buy a book. You can imagine him yelling "this is not a lending library!" several times each day.

ineedasername 4y ago

>He sold a copy of “Finnegans Wake” to Johnny Depp This is one of the most fascinating books that I know of. I'm pretty well convinced that the world population of people who have read more than the very beginning and very end probably numbers roughly the count of my fingers and toes combined. Although I think many people I also think the the only person who ever really understood the book was James Joyce himself. Fluency in multiple languages down to idiomatic expressions and deep etymology seem like strict requirements if you have never occupied the meatspace between Joyce's ears. Any small portion seems somewhat comprehensible in its highly local environment, and a bit funny or witty in how it's written. But then it breaks down when attempting to connect that piece to the wider whole. And it all makes me feel like I'm reading extremely familiar words whose meaning I can't quite remember. In refreshing my memory about it before commenting here it made me laugh to see that even the best Wikipedia can say about what goes on in the book is that readers have mostly reach a consensus (but only a consensus!) about normally trivial matter of fact such as the cast of characters, a little less so the plot, but that many other important details amount to poorly mapped terrain. And because I was born with the usual amount of fingers andntoes, if I met a random person in passing, and they claimed to have read the book completely, I would look at them with as much belief as if they had said "I'm a very powerful leader of one of the G20 nations". Actually I might believe the G20 claim a bit more because I would consider it less likely for someone to make a claim like that when it could so easily be proven false if it was not true. If I had not encountered the book long ago then I might believe it to be the output of an extremely oddly trained gpt-3 model. I don't mean that to be an insult to the book, it's just the best comparison I can think of to characterize it's contents in modern terms. This is how fascinating Finnegan's Wake is as a literary work.

rjbwork 4y ago
Reading Joyce is like listening to Prisencolinensinainciusol. It seems like you should be understanding and comprehending it. All the bits are there. You know what the words/syllables respectively are, but you just can't quite seem to grok any meaning out of it.
number6 4y ago
I have this book laying around here. Read the first page and did not understand anything. Quarks are named after a line in this book so I thought: well give it a try. Do you have any idea how to tackle this?

GnarfGnarf 4y ago

Most of the used booksellers I've known are mavericks and misanthropes who love their books, resent parting with them, and run a bookstore because it's a job where they don't have to report to, or work with others. Unfortunately, used book stores are a vanishing breed.

ARandomerDude 4y ago

I have a large-ish library (by personal standards) that spans multiple rooms in my small house. When I invite people over I will, without fail, get one of two responses: 1. "Wow, have you read all these books?" means "I never read books." 2. Scans shelves..."Oh that's a great book...I haven't heard of this author – any good?" means "I read a lot." I'm used to the books and don't get any pride from them but it's amazing how quickly you can tell how literate someone is by their behavior in even a small library.

OJFord 4y ago
I don't know, I like reading, I like books, and I like owning the books I am reading or have read (especially if I liked them). But I do have many books I haven't (yet) read, or have only partially read (especially textbooks and some biographies). It's a hobby I don't spend as much time on as I'd like. I have.. hundreds (I mean that literally - not tens, nor thousands; I don't know exactly the number) of books, a small number across a few rooms. Certainly fewer than you. Were I in your house, I might be inclined to ask if, like me, you slightly veer into ~hoarding~ collecting rather than having read them all; perhaps telling yourself you certainly will, as the backlog only grows ever longer, or whether I should feel ashamed because you actually have read them all and it's a much larger hoard.
- ARandomerDude 4y ago
  I have many books I haven't read. When I am exploring a subject, I'll often hear a subject matter expert say "the go-to text on this is $BOOK." At that point, I buy the book if I have a reasonable expectation that I'll actually read it. Some books I only reference or read partially if the subject is pretty well divisible. I read a few tens of books per year but my queue is a couple years long. No big deal, I don't feel pressure to get through it.
- groby_b 4y ago
  It is not hoarding - it's aspirational collecting :) Most people who love books have entire stacks that they haven't read yet. Because your love means there are just so many of them you'd like to have in your life. And the fact that even on a low income, the cost of reading often vastly outstrips the cost of buying (in terms of time) means that sometimes, you'll choose to collect more instead of finish what you have. Is it smart? I don't know. I like to think that the unread books are like way posts showing me the direction into unknown terrain I'd like to explore but can't just yet. I have not seen the dragons, but the book reminds me "there be dragons". The joy is in knowing that the world is so much bigger than anything you deeply know. Maybe that's hoarding. Maybe it's defining your place in the world. Maybe it's the comfort that you could know in a moment, if you but chose to. If it gives you joy, who cares :)

B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago

"[...] sense that there I’ll find a book, as yet unknown to me, which to some degree will change my life." In retrospect, and having felt that way, I realize that is an unreasonable hope. Very bad odds, if you even think it out for a bit. On the other hand, interesting entertainment is often one lucky find away.

antonvs 4y ago
After that realization, I pretty much gave up browsing bookstores, long before bookstores "died". Although part of the issue is that mainstream bookstores perform curation based almost purely on popularity, which makes them terrible places to find much more than variations on Oprah's latest book club selection.

fauria 4y ago

At El Celler de Can Roca (3 Michelin Star restaurant in the northeastern coast of Spain) you can not only smell old books but also "eat" them: https://www.finedininglovers.com/article/roca-brothers-are-quite-literally-cooking-books https://www.finedininglovers.com/article/roca-brothers-are-q... The Roca brothers managed to create a device (Rotaval) used to distill essences from different objects, after rubbing them with fat and dissolving it in alcohol. Low quality video from the device (couldn't find any better): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blB7VYQCxZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blB7VYQCxZw

TheDesolate0 4y ago

Bullshit like this is why I cancelled my NYT sub.

pklausler 4y ago
Hiring a climate science denier for the opinion page was my last straw.
zizee 4y ago
Book reviews caused you to cancel your subscription? Why?

arthurcolle 4y ago

There seem to be no book stores in Miami like at all anymore, it is pretty sad. Apparently Books & Books was a thing before but no longer exists other than the sun umbrellas outside where they used to be.

pjmorris 4y ago
Your comment shocked me. I checked and it looks like the Books & Books on Lincoln Road is gone but the web holds out hope that the main store in Coral Gables is still there. I hope that's true.

Andaith 4y ago

> Also one must be ruthless with those who ask, “What is the most expensive book you’ve got here?” Often it is the male of the species trying to impress the female. That's wild to me. What a weird thing. Is this primarily an Americanism? One of the things I miss the most about the UK is the bookshops, the second-hand bookshops, the weird one-pound-per-book barns in random villages, the book festivals, the charity shops where every book is a pound. The idea of caring about, or wanting, a _book_ because of how expensive it is, is just so genuinely alien to me that I've gotten stuck on that sentence.

jeshin 4y ago
yeah, a book is a particularly strange object to do that with. It's not like it's going to have gold rims, automatic spill prevention and drop parachute, and self-reading abilities. it's probably going to be some textbook
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
  Well, we have the technology. It's only a matter of time until someone publishes such a book.
bobsmooth 4y ago
Is it any more strange than buying the most expensive car or the most expensive wine?
- GoodbyeMrChips 4y ago
  Eh? One buys sports cars and wine for enjoyment. The idea of buying the most expensive offering for its own sake is laughable. One doesn't order an expensive claret to drink with fish!
dionidium 4y ago
"Expensive" in this case is a proxy for rare/unique/desirable/collectible/interesting, since those are the properties that would make a book expensive. It's actually a totally normal and reasonable question.

dhosek 4y ago

Back in the late 80s/early 90s, I used to travel a few times a year to give LaTeX seminars and one of the things I would do was get the local yellow pages and (don’t tell anyone) rip out the pages that listed all the local bookstores and then I would proceed to go to every single one of them. Boulder, Colorado had a great selection of bookstores. I remember going into one bookstore and being puzzled when I not only couldn’t find any of my favorite authors on the shelves, but I had never heard of any of the authors. It wasn’t until I left the store and turned around and looked at the store again that I realized it was an adult bookstore (I think it was named something like Kitty’s Books and the signage as to its nature was subtle). Another fun moment was visiting a bookstore/cafe/literacy center in New Orleans and picking up a self-published game there called Cartoon Wars on the recommendation of the clerk on duty. I flipped through it back at my hotel room and realized it was created by someone I went to college with. When I visited the UK, I came home with so many books, I had to declare my purchases at customs. Fortunately, I didn’t have to pay any import duty on them.

selimthegrim 4y ago
> Another fun moment was visiting a bookstore/cafe/literacy center in New Orleans and picking up a self-published game there… If you are referring to Iron Rail I am afraid it has been closed for a while. Neutral Ground is still around but not a bookstore.
- dhosek 4y ago
  I’d have a hard time remembering what it was called—this was 31 years ago. I remember loving the concept and wanting to open something similar in Southern California (all I lacked was the time, money and ability). Nowadays, I support the somewhat similar in mission Open Books here in Chicago (whose main bookstore is in the same building as my current employer). What I remember was that their main clients for the literacy services were crew members from cargo ships.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    Ah this sounds like the Norwegian Seamen's Church (closed in 2018)

stevomacdaddy 4y ago

the smell of old books is just the breath of everyone who has ever read the book stuck between the pages.

animal531 4y ago

I really love books, but I'm also highly allergic to old ones. Only a few minutes of exposure and my nose will run like a faucet. Fortunately these days I have my Kindle so I can still collect and read books as I want to.

rramadass 4y ago

Money quote: “the book trade is a floating world for people of intelligence unsuited for anything else.” I think this is also applicable to a lot of us who like to read a lot.

the-mitr 4y ago

If you visit Bangalore, India you should visit Blossoms book store on church street. They have 2 shops nearby stacking books on all topics that you can think of, used and new. The used section is very interesting and the books are quite cheap too. Whenever I visit Bangalore, I keep one entire day for blossoms, and even that is not sufficient, you still yearn to take more books or look at them, browse racks full of rare, unheard of books along with bestsellers and classics.