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Thread: Where does everyone buy their books?

  1. #1
    Aurora
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    Where does everyone buy their books?

    Just curious - do you all buy first hand books from book shops or used editions from ebay or amazon? Does it bother you if they have been used before or not?
    Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aurora View Post
    Just curious - do you all buy first hand books from book shops or used editions from ebay or amazon? Does it bother you if they have been used before or not?
    As for me, it's fairly often that by reading one or another book I stumble upon the next author or next book to read. Then I'm going to library (Apropos, it's almost fascinating to find marginal notes left by other readers.). My favorite books I buy at a bookshop.

  3. #3
    Dance Magic Dance OrphanPip's Avatar
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    There is a used book shop around the corner from where I live, so that tends to be where I buy a lot of books. I also shop at some of the independent book shops downtown because they carry things other shops don't. I prefer browsing books in person at shops, but I occasionally buy off amazon when I know exactly what I want to buy.
    "If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
    - Margaret Atwood

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    Card-carrying Medievalist Lokasenna's Avatar
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    Well, Amazon if the books I want are on it.

    That said, most of the books I buy are too specialised for Amazon - usually have to buy straight from the publishers.

    Also, nothing beats pottering around a decrepit, ancient secondhand bookshop and finding something wonderful.
    "I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche

  5. #5
    Ecurb Ecurb's Avatar
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    I'm a professional burglar. So when I break into ritsy homes and make off with jewelry, computers and cash, I always try to grab a couple of novels.

  6. #6
    Artist and Bibliophile stlukesguild's Avatar
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    For years I built my collection up through what I could find at second-hand book stores. This had pluses and minuses. There were always specific books that I sought that I could not find. On the other hand, there were always those great finds... books and writers I hadn't heard of and never would have consciously sought that just grabbed me.

    Over the last 10 years or so the independent bookstores have become an endangered species here. There are exceptions near universities and in cities like New York, but the big chains slowly put the independents out of business... although we do still have a good chain that deals in used books: Half-Price Books. Starting around 10 or twelve years ago I began buying as much or more at Borders and Barnes & Noble as anywhere else.

    Over the past 4 or 5 years I've reached something of a saturation point. I can rarely find anything I need (or want) at any book store. Of course there are books by Dickens or Zola or many other major writers that I do not yet own... but I realize that I can get them at anytime. For the books I particularly want (and this applies to music as well) I must turn to Amazon and their secondary dealers... or in certain circumstances, on companies like Alibris that deal with out of print books.
    Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
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  7. #7
    Aurora
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    Quote Originally Posted by Leo Bloom View Post
    it's almost fascinating to find marginal notes left by other readers
    Agreed.

    I've got many used books from Amazon, mostly ones that I read for my degree but I find now that even if I want new books Amazon is much cheaper than Waterstones etc. I do love going into book shops though and browsing the shiny covers
    Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aurora View Post
    I do love going into book shops though and browsing the shiny covers
    There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold

  9. #9
    deus ex machina Shalot's Avatar
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    Kindle downloads right now. I also joined a book club. That is not working out. I have to buy two more books at club prices or something. And I forgot to reply to the featured selections twice so now I have some really overpriced hardback books that I have no desire to read. And it was too complicated to return them. But, in my family, people like to give each other books as Christmas presents. No one really knows what other family members like to read, but they give books anyway. So, with my accidental book club purchases, I now have Christmas gifts to give so that another family member can unwrap an unwanted book and say "Oh thank you!" and then remark to their significant other on the way home, "What the hell?" Maybe, for good measure, I'll wrap up the T is for Trespass book and VHS tape that I got as gifts last year. It will be a bonus. Speaking of bonues, there was a bonus DVD in one of my book club shipments. Maybe some family member was in a bookclub 10 years ago and that's where my VHS tape came from. Wow, I have really rambled.

    I also buy books from Borders and from the used book store. I heard Borders was having financial difficulty. I hope bookstores are not replaced by Kindle books because there is just something about the atmosphere in a bookstore. And you can buy those hobby kits for $7.99 or something on sale. I have a Feng Shui kit, a yoga kit, a "draw really cool stuff" kit, a "learn to paint" kit, the Office Space kit with my very own jump to conclusions mat, and it seems like I had something else but I can't remember. Oh yeah, someone gave me a meditation kit for Christmas one year. It was actually pretty cool. It was just a book and CD that I played at work during the day for the purpose of annoying my coworkers but it was fine. So yeah, the Kindle books are working out okay, but in my opinion, there's nothing like a bookstore
    "...if you weren't smart enough to get a pedophile in a dress to put a small amount of water on the child’s forehead, then what the eff did you think was going to happen?

  10. #10
    Aurora
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    I sometimes wish that I had a kindle, although I imagine it takes something away from the experience of reading a book??

    Quote Originally Posted by Leo Bloom View Post
    There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
    I'm a sucker for shiny
    Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf

  11. #11
    Kristina Faith faithosaurus's Avatar
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    We don't have a used bookstore nearby, so for novels I buy at bookstores like Barnes and Noble.

    I go to Amazon for my school books usually; not textbooks but like, books that...pertain, for lack of better words. Like in my IB Chem class, I bought an IB booklet from there that had all the info.
    "I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking."

  12. #12
    I buy my books new most of the time, from big bookstores or Amazon.
    “Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.”
    ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

  13. #13
    TobeFrank Paulclem's Avatar
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    I bought A Kestrel For A Knave by barry Hines in Oxfam yesterday. I also buy off Amazon, as you often can't get what you want. There a discount bookstore in town - opposite Oxfam, and I go in there often, though don't often find much. I did get a big, new, cheap Paradise Lost from there at Christmas though. I also look in the regular bookshop - particularly at classics or literary novels. I was wandering around the bookstoress again today as well. I'm a book sucker.

  14. #14

    Buckle up!

    right now the doc does most of his book buying at the assorted library book sales...you can't beat the price and the money goes to a great cause...five or six different libraries throughout the year...it would take the doc a couple years to catch up to all the books he's bought in the last year...and the sales keep popping up on the calender...


    need the doc type more?

    ROAR!

  15. #15
    Captain Azure Patrick_Bateman's Avatar
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    I desperately desperately try and buy as many books from local stores and Waterstones but Amazon is too easy and oh so cheap.

    I have been buying more classical music from my local bookshop though, rather than Amazon.
    Latest Blog: An Impassioned and Immediate Response to Dan Hodges, Political Writer, Daily Telegraph.
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