Kindle, cont.

The other day I wrote a brief post about getting a Kindle.  Here I want to expand on the effect of the Kindle on my reading and book-buying habits.

I love it that I could pre-order a book that was about to be published and have it appear on my Kindle.  I love being able to take it to the gym.  I have some long flights coming up, and traveling around, and it’ll be great.

BUT — I miss real books. And won’t give them up.  But won’t be buying as many, which is real dilemma — I want and NEED bookstores to stay open. And Berkeley, which was once a great bookstore town, is now impoverished, with both Cody’s and Black Oak gone.

As I said in the last post, the Kindle doesn’t work for professional reading. And for books I want to keep and refer back to — professional or other — I’ll want a physical volume.

For leisure reading: the Kindle doesn’t remind me that I’m in the middle of a book, or that I’m getting near the end and so will read more to find out how it turns out.  It doesn’t sit around visibly calling to me the way a book does.  I find myself looking for a newspaper or magazine when, say, I sit down to eat, and not thinking of the Kindle.  It’s taking me a lot longer to read my current book (Netherland) than it normally would, for such a book — I just don’t think about it. Even though it’s a wonderful, superbly-written book.

I was telling someone about Netherland and I had no idea who the author is (Joseph O’Neill) — and I didn’t recognize the book online when I went looking to see if the author had a new book out. I don’t ever see the cover.

I don’t have a pile of books reminding me of what I have yet to read, or what I’m in the middle of — serious books for some moods; light novels (sci fi, of late) for other moods.

I went into Pegasus books looking for something for a gift and felt a longing for REAL books.  I bought a new paperback by a sci fi author I like (Joe Haldeman; The Forever War is a sci fi classic, and rightly so) — I rationalized that it was less than $10 so the savings on the Kindle would be minimal.  But, since that’s the sort of book I read on the cardio machines at the gym, it would be more convenient to have it on the Kindle. But — not the same.

I felt guilty toward Pegasus — that I’ll buy fewer books from them. (This was before I learned that Black Oak had closed — more guilt.)  And I need bookstores around to (1) browse for books to buy in the Kindle (more guilt), and (2) buy books that I want or need in paper.  Yet this means I’ll be buying less and their sales will go down a little more.

We need a business model that both acknowledges the digital reality AND allows us to have local outlets — like bookstores — where we can browse, preview books, and get physical as well as digital copies.  One possibility is that Amazon share its Kindle revenue with bookstores –e.g., I go to Pegasus and “buy” a book for my Kindle (at the same price — else we’d all just go home and order).  Also, I’m still waiting for print-on-demand, which would allow my local bookstore to have a huge inventory without the downsides of physical inventory and the impossibility of perfectly anticipating demand.

Another Bookstore Closing

Belatedly — I’ve learned that Black Oak Books closed in early June.

I guess it says something about Black Oak that I used to be one of their regular customers, and drive past their store all the time, but didn’t know about this until 2 months after it happened.  I’ve shifted to using Pegasus on Solano most of the time — a better inventory, and, especially, a better way of displaying new books.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Berkeley

Photo by Peg Skorpinski for UC Berkeley.  (Not mine!)

Another Berkeley Bookstore Bites the Dust

Barnes & Noble on Shattuck has closed.

Berkeley which used to be a town full of bookstores, with Cody’s as the flagship, has fewer and fewer.

I keep expecting  to see Black Oaks to close — when I’m there it’s always mostly empty, very different from just a few years ago.  This is a tragedy — buying books online is OK, but it’s very different from being able to look at and handle books, and find ones I wouldn’t have known to order online.  And the fewer books I can find locally, the more I order online: with Cody’s Telegraph closed, there’s no place around, including Cody’s 4th Street, with that selection.  And with Cody’s gone B&N was more important, as a large bookstore with a variety of books.

Another Berkeley Indepedent Bookstore in Trouble

Black Oak Books is for sale– from SF Chronicle:

But with profit margins down, a five-year lease coming due and a partner who wants to retire, Pretari, 49, may have to seek a vocation less perfectly suited to a Berkeley-educated polymath.

Last week, he sent up a trial balloon, inviting someone, anyone, to buy one or both Black Oaks stores — the Berkeley location on Shattuck Avenue or the San Francisco store on Irving Street. (A short-lived third store in North Beach closed last year.)

“We’d like Black Oak to keep going,” he says, adjusting his round glasses and settling into a chair in the back office, a warren of books. “We’re exploring every possibility, even if that means someone else has to come in and own it.”

Consumer Alert: Avoid Site for Sore Eyes, Berkeley

I had them try (and fail — twice) to make a pair of sunglasses from my optometrist’s prescription. They made two mistakes. One was not quite matching my prescription, the other (and more serious) was based on a measurement of their own — clearly, to me, they blew the initial measurement and, instead of redoing the measurement and remedying the problem, they argued that there is no problem — despite the fact that the glasses don’t match my regular glasses and simply don’t work! Sloppy work, and no willingness to admit to and remedy their mistakes. Avoid them. Pass the word.

ADDENDUM: A Google Local search on them turned up a majority of very negative reviews, one of which says they have Better Business Bureau complaints against them. Well, now they have one more; I filed one today.

UPDATE 12/30/06: It’s been a while, but I saw that this posting got a hit because someone was searching for this business. They never answered the BBB complaint, which resulted in the BBB finding against them. And my credit card company credited my account.