Stacey's Books closing
2009-01-07 15:49:46.068338+00 by Dan Lyke 7 comments
Stacey's Books in SF is closing. The eBook isn't really here yet, but books are over.
2009-01-07 15:49:46.068338+00 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 17:12:04.48226+00 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 19:59:42.089721+00 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 21:52:32.332809+00 by: brennen
If writing is dead, my feedreader sure does play host to a lot of zombies.
#Comment Re: made: 2009-01-07 22:27:43.211205+00 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 02:07:45.132379+00 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 10:24:45.884628+00 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 14:47:05.067113+00 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.