Shopping

It's been possible for several years now to buy whatever you want online and not have to go out to brick and mortar stores for most things.  For a long time, being used to having to travel a certain distance to find rare items, it almost seemed like cheating that buying them online was so easy.  When it came to books and music, I enjoyed the hunt, and the pleasant surprise I got from happening across long-desired items in stores.

I'm getting over all that.  In the case of books, it's not that the thrill of the hunt is gone, it's that the surviving large chains seem to have given up.  They can't stock everything the way that the Internet can, and they seem to be moving more than ever toward stocking just the newest and most commonplace titles.  The sure things.

I went to Barnes and Noble today for a copy of J.M.Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians.  Coetzee is one of the more popular literary fiction writers, and Barbarians is one of his better-known titles.  In the recent past, I've been able to go to B&N and find several of Coetzee's books in a friendly little row of Penguins.  Today, I found only three of his novels, none of them Waiting for the Barbarians.  And it took me a little time to find the three Coetzees because, more and more, I'm finding that the chains can't keep enough people employed to keep the books in alphabetical order.  B&N is getting worse, and Books-A-Million doesn't even try.

Perhaps it seems like a paradox, but I think that, while the competition from online sources is putting the brick and mortar chains out of business, the lack of competition from the defunct Borders has made Barnes and Noble slack.

I have reached the tipping point, where the enjoyment of buying things online has surpassed the attraction of buying them in stores.

(Independent and used bookstores are another matter, however.  Still fun.)