Back From the Amazon

There's been a lot of heated discussion lately, rising to a shrillness like that of Occupy, about the choice to buy from Amazon or to buy from independent bookstores.  I'll probably get burned at the stake for this post, but I thought I would offer up my take on the fight, as a writer, as a reader, and as someone who has lived in a graduating increase of immediate, surrounding population.  (What does that have to do with the price of eggs, you ask?  It will become apparent in a moment.)

So I'll start simply with the argument for the independent bookstore:

• I love bookstores;
• I love bookstores the way an alcoholic loves bars.  I could go home and drink, too, but it's more fun to drink with people;
• I love bookstores with a funky personality;
• I love bookstores that I can walk to, from work or from home;
• I love paper books.  I read more this year than I have in any other year (part of the perks of unemployment), and I still didn't read down the stack of books that I had accumulated from bookstores throughout the Bay Area over the years;
• I love having a stack of traditional books to read next to my bed;
• I love new and used bookstores.

Mark you, these are my reasons.  They aren't reasons for you to go, dear reader, but reasons you might go.

Now, my argument for buying from Amazon:

• I rent movies from Amazon.  Because I read so many books over the course of my free time, I don't spend enough time watching movies to warrant a Netflix subscription, and renting two movies a month from Amazon is cheaper than watching two movies a month on Netflix;
• I have a Kindle.  My primary reasons for loving the Kindle are listed here, but here's the short span--it's light and I can carry a whole freaking stack of books on it.  I can read the whole freaking stack on my phone, my laptop, or my Kindle.  And if I read the whole freaking stack on the Kindle the newsprint background (no, I do not own, nor will I ever own, a Kindle Fire) and the ability to increase the type size means my eyes get a break without my glasses.  If you have ever been a city commuter on mass transit, that lightweight aspect is a big thing;
• Some books are still cheaper on the Kindle (I don't know for how much longer, but they are);
• Sometimes Amazon is the only place to find a particular book, unless you want to wait a long turn-around time to order it from the local bookstore.  Case in point (and this book was on environmentalism).  I ended up getting that book from Green Apple here in the City, but that's because I held out and waited;
• I like the reviews on EVERYTHING in Amazon.  Not just selections that critics or bookstore employees deemed worthy to read, but anything I pick up and am torn about reading (although I have to admit, more and more I go to GoodReads for that);
• I haven't always lived in a great big, gloriously messy, cluttered and wonderful City.  The last known address before San Francisco was Sunnyvale, and the bookstores in the South and Central areas of the Peninsula aren't as numerous as they are here (rephrase:  NOT WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE).  Before that, I lived in Southwest Missouri, where there were library bookstores, a bookstore out by Chesterfield Village in Springfield, and the two chains, Borders and Barnes and Noble.  Before THAT, Branson, Missouri, which I think had a library...yep, it will get worse...lastly, before that, in Northwest Ohio, where one very small hole-in-the-wall bookstore existed five miles from me, one chain (Waldenbooks, Defiance Mall, Defiance Ohio) 30 minutes from me...or, if I was feeling really adventurous, bookstores an hour west or an hour east in either Fort Wayne, Indiana or Toledo, Ohio, respectively.  If I still lived in any of those places, with the exception of, well, here, for crying out loud, I would probably be ordering from Amazon.

*****

My mother loved books--her favorites fell under the category of children's literature, but when she passed my brother informed me that an adult favorite of hers was Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," which makes sense in the fact that my mother could love ANYTHING, no matter how depressing--and we had quite the collection growing up.  My grandmother on my father's side also loved books, and she lived with us in an addition that was built on the original house, so more than once during my childhood I would catch my father shaking his head as he looked around him and muttering, "God help us if a lighted match drops in here."  (He was a good one to talk--the guy was hooked on Reader's Digest magazine, In Fisherman, and Cabela's catalogs.)  The most books my mother had by one publisher could be spotted within four steps of walking in the door--she probably had every Reader's Digest Condensed Book ever published.  Condensed books were the scourge of literary society at that time, but I have enjoyed one or two in my day (one was a novel about the life of Annie Oakley, and watch it, the book is hard to find, so I had to give you a link to AMAZON...).  Every generation has its devils.

My belief is simple--there's room for all of it.  Mr. Russo wants to do away with Amazon.  Mr. Manjoo wants to do away with the independent bookstore.  Extremists.  

Here's the deal.

If I can possess and readily use writing instruments that are as varied and progressive as the fountain pen to the gel writer to the laptop to the iPhone, then I will want the same variety in my reading instruments.  I'm willing to read a damn scroll if I find it entertaining, and I have stood in line and went online for both fountain pens and paperbacks alike.  Why do we all have to fall in a neat, well-mannered row?  Why oh why do we all have to be the same?

Onward, dear reader, however you may roam.