Borders to Declare Bankruptcy

Me! I still love to pick an interesting title off the shelf and page through it. Then I go home and download it on my I-pad (just kidding, I don't have an I-pad...yet).

 

To repent, just go to Strands.

 

I'm guessing you're from Denver...Tattered Cover is that huge famous bookstore downtown with the square staircase in the middle, right? If so, that is one awesome bookstore. Went there many moons ago and was truly impressed.

 

You can buy a brand new hardback on Amazon for $14 instead of $28 and spend $4 on overnight shipping and have it to your door by noon the next day. Suck it, Borders.

 

Once you get a Kindle you never want to go back. I held of buying one because I liked the heft of a book but my wife bought me one for Christmas and now I never go to bookstores. Barnes and Noble is next to go.

 

I never quite got over the demise of Kay's Books in Cleveland.

 

Yeah, this is a big reason why my bookstore consumption has gone down a bunch. I like going into a bookstore to browse and see what's there, but I can also do that for free at the library. Pretty much any other book I want is available via the Internet, and if it's more than six months old, you can normally get a used copy for $5 at most.

 

This 29-year-old dinosaur does, and rarely will I leave without at least one book.

Good thing I can still lean on Kinokuniya.

 

Join Amazon Mom and you get prime free for three months... I bought two baby gates for the dogs and some baby holding contraption I sold on ebay and got another four months worth....

That tip aside, if I want a book most of the time, I want it now. If I buy on line, its for something I used to read and want to read again because I no longer have the book; or it's something I can't get around here (surprisingly, there aren't a lot of books on Michigan football at Books A Million). Then it's Abe Books.

 

I like Borders better than B&N but we haven't had one near here for a while.

This is actually pretty sad for me -- I'm a Michigan alum (late 80s/early 90s) and used to hang out at the original Borders on State Street quite a bit. It was just a local standalone bookstore. When I came to Boston to visit law schools shortly after college, my uncle -- a lawyer -- asked me if I was familiar with Borders and I said sure. He was doing the commercial lease for what was apparently their second location, in Framingham, Mass. I had no idea they were expanding. And then years later, I ended up buying a house a mile from that location. But it closed a few years back -- it was just a two-story bookstore with no cafe and no music section and couldn't compete with the Barnes & Noble / Starbucks nearby. Hopefully at least the B&N sticks around because we don't have any other bookstores nearby, other than a tiny used bookshop with an underwhelming selection. It ain't exactly Powell's in Portland.

 

Some of my favorite books are ones I found just from poking around in a bookstore. Though, I have to admit, I haven't bought as many books in book stores as I used to and I got a Kindle for Christmas.

Of course, I'm most curious about what they're going to do with all those espresso machines. All of their stores got nice Thermoplan machines in the last five years.