The fate of bookstores

[Clueless Morgan]

Powells here in Portland is a city treasure and is going strong. I have a feeling if Powells goes down it'll go down swingin' and with a lot of people fighting for it.

My major weakness is the sale table at Powells which can usually undercut kindle books by a couple dollars; I often will look up a book on amazon and then check Powells' website to see if there are used copies out there. Then I'll go to Powells to pick up the book and end up leaving with that book, two or three other books and a couple impulse items. Powells is a dangerous place for me to go.

I also am not completely satisfied by my kindle; I find it hard to scan through a book looking for a reference, I can't read my notes on a passage easily and it's hard to look up the passages that I've underlined. It might just be the kind of kindle I have (the older keyboard model, not a kindle fire) but I'm perfectly content to carry on with paper books and relegate my kindle to fiction where I don't feel compelled to take notes.

I've got the fire. It's pretty great. Wait a minute. You're telling me there's a way to underline text in the kindle?

In the Kindle Keyboard there is; I don't know how to do it in the Kindle Fire.

I actually just found out there might be an easy way to reference your notes and underlined passages on the Kindle I have, but I just bought a book on my kindle* and am mid-way through reading it and I don't want to fuck with things too much, lest I lose my spot again. I have the orientation rotated and I keep hitting the button that jumps me to the beginning of the next chapter so I have to keep going back and scrolling through until I find my spot again... stupid technology! This is why paper books rule! - That, and you don't have to charge their batteries...

*I just bought Peter Boghossian's Manual for Creating Atheists, which I had totally intended to buy at the event Powells was putting on for him since he's local (he was doing a reading and a meet and greet), but I totally spaced it after I left the gym. I was so fuckin' mad! So I bought it on my Kindle and have intentions of purchasing a paper copy the next time I'm allowed in Powells. (I have to periodically ban myself from even entering the store - those damn sale tables are just too tempting.)

Powells sounds like a slice of heaven, you're very lucky to have that.

If you're a book lover and are ever in Portland, check it out; the store is a whole city block and there are, I think, four or five floors... I can't top Zazzy's description:

I have been to this bookstore (even though I'm from Texas, I have friends in civilized lands) and it made me cream my pants.

It's never made me cream my pants, but then again I grew up with Powells...

If bookstores die, I think I'll die with them. I guess I'm a Luddite, but I just can't do the Kindle. I don't have anything against it; I just can't do it. I LOVE books. I love the different weights and the expectations they bring - a slim volume vs a fat one. I love the smell of the pages. I love dogearing pages. I love rereading a favorite book and seeing my old dogears. I love getting a GREAT book and passing it on to friends, and knowing they'll pass it on, and so forth. I love blurbs and cover art. I love reading in the bathtub and dropping my book in the water and swearing and then having it get all fat as it dries.

You just sent shivers up my spine. I HATE writing in books, dog earring pages, and giving my books away... I'm the queen of post-its, the repositionable passage marker, and the accompanying notebook. My 9th grade English teacher made us mark up our copies of the book 1984 which broke my heart, and I can't reread that copy because the highlights, underlining and notes are too distracting to me. That's the only good thing about Kindles to me: the underlining without feeling I'm destroying the integrity of the book.

The only book I've ever written in that I didn't feel bad about writing in was the bible. ;p