An Ode to Barnes & Noble

Confession: I have an addiction to book stores!

I pretty much can't help myself from walking in the front door of nearly any book store I come across. Once I'm in the front door, I'm seldom able to escape without buying at least one more title for my bookshelves at home (now topping 500 titles). It's even worse when I travel. When I'm no longer on home turf, walking into a bookstore and taking a look at the new non-fiction releases helps me get my bearings, helps me get oriented. It makes any city I've been to feel a bit more like home. It even worked in Quebec City last summer and the books were in French. I'm sure most people have these kinds of moments when they travel. For Christina, it's walking into a Starbucks and ordering a remarkably complicated espresso drink.

Back to New York:

That prologue serves to introduce my next post about the trip to New York. Our first couple of hours in New York, we were exhausted. It was raining and our efforts at exploring didn't get us very far. It was a total of two blocks before I spotted my first book store and true to form, I couldn't help myself.

"Do you think we could stop, just for a couple minutes?"

Barnes & Noble is the titan of brick and mortar booksellers in the US. The store that we stopped at was located at Broadway & Columbia in Manhattan and was 6 stories of glorious retail space filled with rows upon rows of bookshelves. I'd never been to Barnes & Noble before this, and must say I was very much overwhelmed.

My friend Jordan, who moved to Vancouver with his wife Sarah, is studying at Regent College. Recently, Jordan and I were talking and he asked me why Chapters was such a "terrible bookstore". Now, with the exception of one or two fantastic independent booksellers (Duthie's or Wells books for instance), my experience of bookstores has been typefied by the downtown Chapters flagship. Jordan however, has experienced both the best Canada had to offer (Chapters) and the best that the US could produce (Barnes & Noble). The fact is that B&N is far superior and he was confused why Chapters was such an abysmal bookstore experience. Having experienced nothing superior to Chapters myself, I had no explanation to offer. I did listen to him tell me about his love for B&N and how the book selection was wider and more intellegent and how the staff had a lot they could teach the attendant customer.

All of his high praise was justified in my first B&N experience. Not only are their staff members deeply informed and remarkably widely read but the store that I walked into in New York carried the widest range of books imaginable. EVERYTHING was there.

To make the point, an example. I've been looking for a copy of Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child (3rd ed. 1995). No less than 18 book stores in Vancouver since September (three of them Chapters Stores), failed to produce a copy when I asked. In fact, they seemed capable only of producing blank stares. In contrast, the first staff person I asked at B&N was familiar with the book and knew where I could find it. He also mentioned a couple of other titles I might find helpful in a similar vein.

Christina and I spent quite some time browsing. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I spent quite some time browsing and Christina spent some time patiently occupying herself while I devoured the back pages of book after book in the psychology and philosophy sections. I could not have been happier. Once I'd purchased my books, we plugged into the coffee shop on the top floor and spent some quiet time enjoying them. This was the best imaginable way to spend my first rainy afternoon in manhattan. It was great.