Barnes & Highly Ignoble

For months at a time, I forget how the rest of the country lives. I forget about the predominance of chain stores, the lack of restaurant options, the driving.

It took only three minutes inside Barnes & Noble today to realize what a terrible bookstore it is and feel sorry for the rest of the US. I buy my books exclusively from Amazon, for low prices, or my local bookshop, where everything looks good AND I feel good about supporting the neighborhood.

Barnes & Noble, which I haven't really visited since the ol' Yale Bookstore -- which I'm sure was jazzed up for the location -- has neither advantage. However, my secret santa at work gave me a gift card yesterday and I was determined to put it towards buying other people's presents today. Thus, I made the drive up to Larkspur, CA, one of the most personality-less places in the universe, and plunged in.

To best describe it -- Barnes & Noble was a bookstore without books. There were guides, lots of pretty pictures, books on tape, a cafe -- but very, very few non-Dan Brown books prominently displayed. Books that have won awards within the past three months were not easily visible. The clerk hadn't heard of any of the books I wanted, nor did they have them in stock. The Fiction section was in the back, by the kids section. In short, it was a bookstore for people who don't read, the people who tell the whole world that they loved the latest book that already sold three million copies and then don't read again for the next year.

Which, sadly, is most of the country.