Flutterby™! : Stacey's Books closing

Stacey's Books closing

2009-01-07 16:49:46.068338+01 by Dan Lyke 7 comments

Stacey's Books in SF is closing. The eBook isn't really here yet, but books are over.

[ related topics: Books Bay Area ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2009-01-07 18:12:04.48226+01 by: brennen [edit history]

Hrm. The book market is a harder and harder place to make money, I don't doubt, and I certainly consume more text online than in print, but you can take my murdered trees when you pry 'em from my cold dead hands.

Actually, I want to propose a new theory, just for the heck of it: What we're witnessing isn't the death of the book, per se, but rather its rebirth as a personal and singular object. Taken a look at how many nice/fancy notebooks you can buy these days, or how many coffee shop types have a Moleskine sitting next to their Macbook?

#Comment Re: made: 2009-01-07 20:59:42.089721+01 by: topspin

To paraphrase a friend, Writing is dead because reading more than an email of material is not interesting for most people anymore. That's amazingly true.

It is worse than that, I feel. If you can't say it in 160 characters of text or twitter format, it's probably more than most folks wanna read.

meta: my first "paragraph" has 154 char, the next 143, by habit. Sigh. I wish I were Ammons stringing narrow couplets on adding machine tape into books, as that would seem to be the only form of writing which will work these days.

#Comment Re: made: 2009-01-07 22:52:32.332809+01 by: brennen

If writing is dead, my feedreader sure does play host to a lot of zombies.

#Comment Re: made: 2009-01-07 23:27:43.211205+01 by: Dan Lyke

"Braaaaaiiins"

Stacey's started out as a technical book store, and though I buy Tom and Dori's best-selling book each time it comes out, I'm definitely turning to the web first for most technical stuff.

But I'd also side with Topspin: writing, as an activity that requires editing and re-reading, is rapidly disappearing, replaced with something more conversational.

#Comment Re: made: 2009-01-08 03:07:45.132379+01 by: skrubly

This absolutely sucks. I live far away from Stacey's now, but during the dotcom boom worked in the Chevron building right above all of those wonderful books.... My dotcom wages fueled my book habit; I was running about $100/week there due to my bus ride commute. You can tear through paperbacks pretty quick on a two hour bus ride.

Sigh. I just got my BA in English, too. What timing.

Skrubly

#Comment Re: made: 2009-01-08 11:24:45.884628+01 by: DaveP

Sad. I used to shop Stacey's Cupertino while they were around. And then every year during WWDC I'd make the walk to Stacey's SF. Now the only bookstore I know of within walking distance of Moscone is Virgin, which is nearly useless to me.

Guess I'll have to pack an extra couple books for the conference this year.

#Comment Re: made: 2009-01-08 15:47:05.067113+01 by: markd

One place I always visit when I come out west is Book Buyers in Mountain View. Big used book store. huge amount of junk, but I always find something new and interesting I haven't read before.

I started weeping for bookstores when Computer Literacy went under in the 90s. Now there was a place I was happy to tithe+ to.