Bookstore Chain Borders is Dead
I can't tell if bookstores have gotten markedly worse or if I've simply become more discriminating in what I'm looking for.  When Barnes and Noble, Borders, et al first swept through the US I thought it was wonderful.  I've spent an inordinate amount of money and time in big-box bookstores.<p>I moved to Germany some 9 years ago.  In my first trips back to the US a bookstore was one of the detours I was most excited about.  I'd typically return to Germany with a couple hundred bucks worth of books stuffed into my bag.  My family, noticing this, started a habit of buying me B&N gift certificates (a pattern that's continued to this day).<p>But now, 9 years and thousands of dollars of Amazon.de purchases later, I can't say that I'm terribly excited about visiting the big box stores.  I struggled to spend my most recent gift certificate.  <i>Struggled!</i>  I went looking for books on Chinese history, and in a two story Barnes and Noble in an upscale Houston neighborhood there were <i>two</i> books on the history of the most populous country in the world.  There were huge aisles of random throwaway junk, games and other silliness and <i>two books on Chinese history</i>.  Nor did they have Bertrand Russel's <i>Principles of Mathematics</i> or Aldous Huxley's <i>Chrome Yellow</i>.<p>I love books.  Paper books.  I have around a thousand of them.  But I won't cry for the passing of the big-box stores if they're bent on becoming the Wal-Mart of reading.