Linkety

[oursin]

Virago reissues The Group by Mary McCarthy. The original critical responses ticked an awful lot of Russ boxes in their dismissal of women's writing. I am, yay, but totally boggled by this:

It was the women's submissiveness that most enraged Norman Mailer, who claimed that McCarthy's novel was fatally diminished by the fact that none of her characters has "the power or dedication to wish to force events", while conspicuously missing the point that it was precisely this enforced passivity that McCarthy wished to highlight.

My impression of Mr Mailer is that he may have preferred feisty women but only so that he could master and humiliate them, but I really have not read much of his oeuvre, srsly.

And on another novel building up a picture out of things to an even greater extent than The Group this sounds tricksy but the reviewer thinks it works.

Nostalgia for the Hovis world that never was, by R McCrum: Most years produce an unexpected Christmas hit. Roy Mayall's rhapsody to the beleaguered postie could be the one for 2009. Up for a 4-something am start, out in all weathers, carrying a heavy sack... oh ye goode olde dayze.

McCrum is also less than golden-glowy about the good oldfashioned independent bookseller:

My memory of old-style bookselling is of dingy, cramped premises, redolent of boiled cabbage, unable to supply the book you actually wanted in less than a month. High-street book chains get a bad press, but the inconvenient truth is that they provide an excellent service for most of their customers.

but rejoices at the new foray of Slightly Foxed into secondhand bookselling.
Long article here on the demise of Borders and the prospects of bookselling but lacks the talking heads of the print edition including L Shriver claiming that she just pops onto Amazon, buys a book and is not tempted into buying another one and someone praising the 'handselling' of books by independents, which thicks my blood with cold ('No, you can not help me. I'm browsing.' Is nowhere safe from this intrusive salespersonship?).

A nice counter-nostalgic history of the development of railways worldwide.

Nice piece on friends by Kathryn Flett:

Maybe in the end the love you take really is equal to the love you make, and perhaps having such extraordinary friends isn't just some miraculous happy-lucky accident of fate. Maybe – sod it – you really do make your own luck just a little bit, in which case perhaps I actually deserve my awesome friends. In which case… how incredibly bloody lucky am I? And there's absolutely no need to answer that one, because I already know.

Comments

[jonquil]

"My memory of old-style bookselling is of dingy, cramped premises, redolent of boiled cabbage, unable to supply the book you actually wanted in less than a month. "

YESYESYESYESYES. God bless. And, consistently, of having my reading tastes sneered at by the bookseller; "my customers don't read X", "we don't carry THAT sort of book", and so on. (Science fiction, romance, and in one notable case, Patrick O'Brian.)

[ankaret]

You should have seen the face the local independent bookshop's owner made at me when I asked for Angela Thirkell reprints. You'd think they were child-on-endangered-zebra porn at the very least.

[jonquil]

Independent bookstores were (perhaps they're changing) as bad as wine stores; they really seemed to be excuses for the owner to defend his or her taste against all customers.

Am I sentimental about *not* having to ask for the copy of Books In Print (no, I don't want you to find it for me, thanks) and then wait four weeks for an order? Not one bit.

[sollers]

"unable to supply the book you actually wanted in less than a month."

To be fair, it wasn't always their fault. In the 1970s I remember my local bookshop waxing eloquent (and profane) over the fact that suppliers didn't really want to have anything to do with small outlets with small orders; if they could order at least 20 copies they would deign to supply them within a couple of weeks, but anything less and they would mess them around royally (cash up in front and at least a month's wait).

[kore]

I remember asking an independent bookseller who became a friend of the family (probably because I hung out in his shop day after day, week after week) for a copy of the then-scarce 'Letters Home' by Sylvia Plath, and had to wait months for him to go to a big book fair/swap thing so he could get a copy (which I still have -- a beautiful old hardback). It was pretty pricey for then, too (altho this _was_ the early eighties). Nowadays, I see from Amazon.com, there are 70 used copies of the 75 hardback from $0.69 and you could probably get one shipped in two days.

L Shriver claiming that she just pops onto Amazon, buys a book and is not tempted into buying another one

I had to train myself to do that on Amazon.com (had to turn off one-click for the same reason) -- and I do love browsing in brick-and-mortar bookstores, but that's inevitably how I spend the most money. Typically I go to Amazon if it's a book (often scholarly)I know a store around here won't carry or it'll take a while to get -- when I worked in a v small independent (not used) bookstore a couple of years back, if someone walked in and we didn't have a copy of a book, the default was 'oh I'll get it from Amazon then,' even if we could order it and have it for them in just a couple of days. I think the smartest thing Amazon probably ever did was that 'free' shipping on what is it, orders over $50? Or even better, that Prime account business. wrt browsing, the bigger chain stores here do seem to be discouraging people who linger: a while back they had comfortable chairs and long reading tables. Now there's no place you can even sit down. I'm not sure if they removed them partly due to the homeless people who would sometimes sleep there, or not.

I don't miss how unavailable some books were but I do miss that books used to be cheaper -- I remember when you could get a hardback for $20 and get back change //COUGH CREAK TAP CANE -- and that you could find more midlist stuff or complete runs of an author. That last seems v rare to me these days. I also remember sitting and reading for hours in bookstores as a kid, often on the floor -- that seems v discouraged now. I also miss the wittier store displays and shelf arrangements as briefly described in the article (nothing more depressing than walking in and facing a wall of 'Twilight' merchandise). I have to admit that a wonderful independent bookstore here just died, which made me really sad, but I hardly ever bought anything from them anymore because they just tended not to have the books I wanted at all (and disastrously -- to me anyway -- really extended their cards and calendar displays. When I go into an indie bookstore I don't care about calendars).


ETA - OTOH YAY Slightly Foxed, that's rather awesome!

[oursin]

In the UK Amazon's maximum order for free shipping has gone down and down and now I think it is free on all orders, with the trade-off of longer delivery times - you pay extra for first-class or next-day posting.

I went quite berserk when I first got onto the internet and could buy secondhand books online - I don't think the particular site is there any more (?bibliofind?), it got hacked at one point - but in those days postage from US was a good deal cheaper and I was buying up Delafields etc by the armful. Also, found things I had been fruitlessly searching for for decades.

[kore]

In the UK Amazon's maximum order for free shipping has gone down and down and now I think it is free on all orders

OHHH NICE

....yeah, 'next day' delivery is never quite as fast as I expect it to be, hmph.

I don't think the particular site is there any more (?bibliofind?), it got hacked at one point

Yes, I think that was it! I remember when abebooks wasn't Amazonified, too.

Also, found things I had been fruitlessly searching for for decades.

OH yes. It was pretty amazing -- I think the author I did that with was mainly Russell Hoban, all of a sudden I was online and there were all these Hobans to be had and I had only about five or six of his books -- I bought a number from Amazon UK. Was thrilled to use the currency converter and everything....!

[boxofdelights]

My husband did that with Russell Hoban too! and now all those books have been picked up by U.S. publishers. Should we pat ourselves on the back?

[kore]

It is SO WEIRD to have Russell Hoban readily available. Delightful! but weird.

[clanwilliam]

I found the last two of my grandfather's books I didn't own through ABE back in the late 90s. One was in Dublin, the other in Australia. I phoned my father when they'd arrived and asked him a tricky question: which would my grandfather have been more pleased about? That one of his books had made it to Australia (in fact, several of his books did) or that his granddaughter had the means to locate and buy them from there? Dad said he wasn't quite sure, but he suspect that Teh Intarwebz bit might have won.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Ack! I have one more day to get to Bailey Coy! I think I might have a full card that is hardly fair to use, too (because I filled most of it anywhere up to decades ago).

[kore]

It was SO sad. I went in there and bought some books to help him pay the last bills or whatever, but I nearly cried. My husband and I walk along Broadway all the time and loved seeing that first-line-of-the-day sign.

Then I went into a Borders to see if they had any deals I could vulture over and three people in the space of five minutes asked if they could help me find anything, OR if I wanted a cookie from their new minicafe. Gack.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Missed it -- I thought they were open through November, but they closed the 20th. Oh, well.

I still miss A Different Drummer on Broadway, and that's been gone for decades.

[ironed_orchid]

Borders seems to be doing well here, although it has bought A&R, which seems to be getting closer and closer to selling remainded books and bestsellers only.

Amazon do not do free shipping to Australia, shipping is often the same price as the book. But since I discovered The Book Depositary I have been ordering 2-4 books a month, mostly focusing on which aren't readily available here.

[clanwilliam]

Easons was never an independent bookseller, but my father and I were both eternally grateful when Waterstones opened up in Dublin. I only found out about Dad a few years later - from the age of 12 onwards (in other words, "we're dumping you in the bookshop, we'll be back in an hour" while visiting Dublin) I always felt profoundly unwelcome in Easons. In other words, if I browsed for more than five seconds, I had a shop assistant breathing down my nose.

Waterstones changed all that. It was only when I was 20 that I mentioned to my father that Easons had behaved like that to me and discovered, to my shock, that they'd treated my middle-aged father the same way.

On the other hand, what I miss about small bookshops was the ones who knew their regulars. They knew that you might pop in, spend half an hour browsing, and not buy anything that time. But they also knew that you would also spend money with them in preference to any other shop. And if they knew you well enough, they *would* recommend books - but because they knew your tastes.

(The Da was well jealous because I could stop into our excellent local secondhand bookshop on the way home from school, but he couldn't from work, because everyone would see him in work clothes (ie, a bank manager in suit with briefcase) and assume there was something wrong with the business - even though the business was not a customer of his!)

[daegaer]

Ah, the good old days of Easons being pretty much the only game in town. "This is not a library!" Charming assistants, one and all.