Tuesday Thingers
Aug. 12th, 2008 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julesjonesThis week's Tuesday Thingers prompt, as ever hosted by TheBostonBibliophile:
My favourite bookstore is Bookbuyers in Mountain View, California. It's a large second-hand shop specialising in genre fiction, and non-fiction, although it covers other areas as well. In particular, the fiction department has a massive science fiction and fantasy collection, including many titles that are out of print and thus not available new. Just to make things perfect, next door is a branch of Books Inc, a local independent chain selling new books. So if it's not in one store, you can try the other.
The first time I went in there I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. It was the biggest selection of sf&f I'd seen (though I've seen bigger since), and it had a whole lot of books I'd fallen in love with in my local library as a teenager. And more books by the same authors.
I'd never seen some of those books on sale before. They hadn't made it out of the US rights area, as far as I know. I had a bit of a buying binge. And I kept on buying books -- sometimes books I already owned, but which I'd had to leave in storage when I first moved to the uS for what was *supposed* to be a couple of years. Or cheap second copies of something I already owned and had access to, but wanted to take on a trip with me. If they were a cheap second copy, I wouldn't mind if I had to abandon them halfway through due to weight issues.
I've moved back to the UK now, so I don't go shopping there any more. But I have fond memories still, and when LibraryThing Local was introduced, I went to add it to the database. And found that someone had beaten me to it. :-)
Today's question: Favorite bookstores. What's your favorite bookstore? Is it an online store or a bricks-and-mortar store? How often do you go book shopping? Is your favorite bookstore (or bookstores) listed as a favorite in LT? Do you attend events at local bookstores? Do you use LT to find events?
My favourite bookstore is Bookbuyers in Mountain View, California. It's a large second-hand shop specialising in genre fiction, and non-fiction, although it covers other areas as well. In particular, the fiction department has a massive science fiction and fantasy collection, including many titles that are out of print and thus not available new. Just to make things perfect, next door is a branch of Books Inc, a local independent chain selling new books. So if it's not in one store, you can try the other.
The first time I went in there I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. It was the biggest selection of sf&f I'd seen (though I've seen bigger since), and it had a whole lot of books I'd fallen in love with in my local library as a teenager. And more books by the same authors.
I'd never seen some of those books on sale before. They hadn't made it out of the US rights area, as far as I know. I had a bit of a buying binge. And I kept on buying books -- sometimes books I already owned, but which I'd had to leave in storage when I first moved to the uS for what was *supposed* to be a couple of years. Or cheap second copies of something I already owned and had access to, but wanted to take on a trip with me. If they were a cheap second copy, I wouldn't mind if I had to abandon them halfway through due to weight issues.
I've moved back to the UK now, so I don't go shopping there any more. But I have fond memories still, and when LibraryThing Local was introduced, I went to add it to the database. And found that someone had beaten me to it. :-)