It's also true in new bookstores that by browsing the stacks, you find books you didn't know existed and are interesting. Amazon does a very poor job of that -

It's also true in new bookstores that by browsing the stacks, you find books you didn't know existed and are interesting. Amazon does a very poor job of that - even the top 100 in a category are not as interesting as the selection in my local small bookstore in the same category. That's because the local bookstore is curated. Amazon is sorted by "popularity". The Harvard Coop was about the last good technical bookstore in my area, but it's been dumbed down, and now just mostly carries the pop science stuff, like other bookstores. I haven't been in the MIT Coop since they moved for the second time. They used to be right in the middle of the campus.