Is there nothing more insufferable than a Barnes and Noble?

Is there nothing more insufferable than a Barnes and Noble?

you

There is literally nothing wrong with B & N
Used Bookstores are cooler, but it's like bitching about walmart and bragging about shopping at Target or Publix or something.

Touché

That's funny because I just decided I'm never stepping into the Burger shithole that is Walmart ever again. I shop at Kroger now.

I like Barnes and nobles baka desu senpai

Your analogy is a poor one. If OP was talking about buying books from Amazon as being better it would be a similar concept because it's just substituting one corporate, bland shithole for another, but he didn't offer a comparison. Choosing a local bookstore, used or new, is much much better than the equivalent of switching to target.

>Shitty library
>Mostly teen lit and new non-fiction that nobody will read again in years to come
>Gigantic Christian section and there's a little tiny shelf devoted to Paranormal that doesn't even have shit
>Everything there is somehow tied into a movie or a game or a musician, capitalist hell
>Some classics but all in the new edition covers made all fancy and shit, which do look kind of nice but at the same time is kind of gross
>any foreign writers will have shit, "new" translations
>Their movie/music and board games are more in your face than the books

I was at an awesome used bookstore today. I spent an hour in there until they closed and wished I could have been there several. I was in B&N for twenty minutes.

i dont know about you amerikanskis but here in canada buying books in-store costs up to 400% as much as it does on amazon or even on the website for the same bookstore.

Yeah, that's about right.

>Not buying the Pope Alexander translation

>be a nice lass
>go to barnes and noble
>goes to browse the fiction section
>fiction section is placed next to a bunch of chairs full of middle aged men who are there just sitting or openly leering
>get creeped on and then have no place to sit to actually read the books

>translation

See Nothing wrong with a book store that panders to normies. How do you think they make money?

Used bookstores are great, but only for new readers. They are almost entirely stuffed with your typical best seller books you'd see at B&N anyway, just cheaper. I go to mine frequently to keep an eye on the stock for anything worthwhile.

If you want a specific book/translation amazion is usually best

>That's funny because I just decided I'm never stepping into the Burger shithole that is Walmart ever again. I shop at Kroger now.

The earlier user was right. There's no difference between the production methods and sourcing of any big chain. You're just a victim of marketing.

OT: the chain bookstore (Hastings) in my dinky town closed. I kinda wonder if the old LBS downtown and the paperback exchange place will get more business or if it will go to Walmart and Amazon.

Yes. I suggest checking out your local value-village/talzie/goodwill/2nd hand shop. Dedicated used book stores are often over priced. It's the 2nd hand donation shops that coincidently get books that have the cheapest prices.

I agree and read in over 5 languages, but if you're going to read a translation then you should go for the Pope's one

You don't buy many books do you? The majority of books are the only slightly cheaper on amazon (10% or so) and often recent bestsellers are the exact same price. 45% discounts are not that common.

i cant find a single art book in here why the fuck can't i?

>How do you think they make money?
Not off their books, that's for sure.

>They are almost entirely stuffed with your typical best seller books you'd see at B&N
Sounds like a Books For Less or one of those places. I'm talking those nice independent bookstores. This one had a basement full of dusty books from '20s and earlier. Bunch of random shit. Titles hard to see because they are faded. A whole basement full of this shit. Also there were cats.

There's no difference in production methods but Kroger isn't full of people tat literally make me want to murder by the time I step outside.

library/charity book sales are the way to go, everything else is usually more expensive than what you can get online at used bookstores at least in my area (but has the pros of being able to see the book in person and possibility of discovery). Most libraries have a little for sale section or a cart, depending on size. For people in college or who live near one: check your school's lib/check around the department offices because they'll be books for free sometimes.
I've never found a book I'd want to read at mine...but I don't go very often. My area sucks though.

Well at least you admit you're a snob. Zizek and DFW look like Walmart shoppers to me. I dare you to call them visually unacceptable to their faces.

Come to Canada and shop at an Indigo/Chapters.

It's a lot like this, but far worse.

>decide I want books for the first time in my life
>fall for the "start with the Greeks" meme
>vaguely remember the last time I was in a B&N they had a decent sized section dedicated to classical lit
>"I'm sure it won't be too hard to find something like the Iliad or maybe a mythology book"
>boy was I wrong
>40% atrocious modern fiction
>20% children's shit
>20% kindleshit
>5% US history
>5% world history
>10% self help books and manga
>nearly 1/4th of it was a shitbucks

How the fuck do they call this ungodly institution a book store

Because it has books, why would a large chain cater to academic neets like you?

at least canada has a decent variety, at least the ones i went to

Oh god, I forgot the manga section. Kek.

i almost only buy books on amazon and you are wrong

Variety, perhaps, but anything of value or that may spark my interest is too deeply hidden to find, and the teenagers that work there don't know where it is either since the majority of people that shop there are going for genre fiction.

why did borders shut down?

if you find it then yippe, the problem with b&n and any mall bookstore here in america is that it lacks books and to fill that gap there are fucking toys everywhere and unless garbage.

Yep, I sure am a neet for wanting commonly read books from a store which would make the most profit by selling commonly read books

they missed out on the coloring book bubble

mine had good baked goods and the cafe seating ambiance of those benches some phramacies have inside for the old people to sit on rip

Bullshit. There isn't a B&N on Earth which doesn't sell all of the well known classics.

This. And when I'm looking for a book I rarely find it. "Oh, well you can order and pick up in sto--" fuck that , bitch, I'll just go to Amazon. .

>half-price books across the street from Barnes and Nobles
>get to buy books in excellent condition for $6

>tfw I use to steal from there so much
>tfw I got caught and am now banned for life

I don't know how im gonna get my books now

I buy most of my books from amazon as well but I also shop at chapters occasionally and price check whatever I'm going to pick up, the prices are generally not that different.

they sell the books on high school summer reading lists, yeah

Just go back and steal anyway? What the fucks the difference, you're already breaking the law.

If I go I can get criminal trespassing on top of petite larceny. The later is nothing really but I don't want criminal trespassing on my record

I couldn't find any Borges that wasn't the cancerous Hurley translations

see I asked if they have pictures of banned people/shoplifters in the back room the other day and anons laughed at me :((

Most of the barnes and noble workers are hipster douches, thank god I made some money off that place. I found out that they have undercover surveillance networks monitoring the store( the one i got caught at was pretty popular). I got dragged to the back room and they took pictures of me and whatever. They laughed because they don't even trust their workers, the workers have to get checked everytime they clock out like they're in africa mining diamonds

hate to break it to you but you sound a lot like a hipster douche yourself.

> I don't like the books they sell
> So this shouldn't be called a bookstore

I can't believe this board calls itself intellectual.

And I personally think may be a moron. Almost every Barnes and Noble carries basic classic literature, since high schools assign shit like The Iliad to entire student bodies. It's not a very broad selection, and their philosophy is usually even worse, but if you can't find the basics it's almost certainly your fault. Also you could just ask.

There's a lot of garbage in B&N stores, but I've yet to see one where you couldn't find more than enough good literature to keep yourself going. Unless you just fetishize old books for their age or obscure authors solely for cred. Which is fine, but outside the clear scope of the store.

I'm not going to walk into a UNIQLO and bitch that they don't have tenderly aged leather for sale.

They do. And if you're a repeater offender or high profile or something the manager usually reminds employees fairly regularly to keep an eye out, and discuss recent offense in the area at morning/afternoon meetings. The notices of shoplifters stick around in the back for a while too.

Source:
Worked at a few stores after college. It was fucking terrible. They're a sinking ship. For all my defense of them above, they do sink all their corporate effort into the wrong things. The focus on toys and music is particularly rough, since it's a huge theft target, tons of upkeep, and takes up a fuckton of space.

Also that's half true. There are private security sometimes, but I was never questioned about anything as a worker. Why you fronting' bruh.

I would call in from a phone on the floor when it was time to leave, clock out on the computer, and often never even saw the guy or management on my way out.

Plus they let you borrow books from the store every week, which was alright. (Corporate policy, not just my managers.)

They're required to ask that. If they were smart they would do an instant price match with all the online sellers, no S&H, same delivery time as Amazon, 10% discount. Seconds to place the order, cardswipe and I'm done. That'd get me back in the store.

>I can't believe this board calls itself intellectual.

It didn't use to be this way. Mostly everyone intelligent left Veeky Forums on a serious basis a long fucking time ago. Now we just have losers, have beens, marketers, high schoolers, the mentally ill, and people who can't find it in themselves to finally leave

I never heard about that, but I also never worked there. But I was detained in a new york one for like 4 hours and I did see security checking employee bags before they left the work place. Also another thing even if they don't catch you the first time they will remember you.

B&N worker detected

Answer will likely vary, but do they typically only care about people stealing expensive stuff or a whole bunch of things or could teens stealing a magazine or a couple books be in the store's sights? how were friends of mine (not me!) never caught

Well, call them back then. What's the summoning spell?

Man, I'd have felt pretty degraded if they started checking us before we left. It was already a less than uplifting environment to be in. I even set off alarms myself a few times without them regarding me as suspicious (not from theft, they just didn't demagnetize the sticker properly at the register.)

I think it fell victim to inflating board culture a bit. Anti-establishment is a fairly site-wide thing, and in literary communities being a snob is already common. So we pretty quickly end up with empty pretension. Style without substance, etc.

The free shipping from being a member is supposed to offset shit, but it doesn't. Because it's slow and the prices are still high. The executives are pretty clearly out of touch with what the customer wants.

They'll keep an eye out for everyone. But books, music, and movies are easy to hide. Large crowds, or even one or two chatty customers, distract the already understaffed employees pretty easily.

Also the employees often don't care. I'll admit, I often felt I wasn't paid enough to get into confrontations with a couple of kids stealing one of those keychains or mystery boxes. If they were stupid or obvious about it, stealing valuable stuff, or just acted like assholes I'd step in, but super minor things? Not a huge concern to me.

Managers and security obviously had higher standards. The regional alerts only went out for serial shoplifters and high value theft.

i guess since your so well aware of what kinds of people are on Veeky Forums now, and your STILL here you must be all those people on that little list of yours.

Yeah I felt bad for the workers but they didn't seem to care most of them are cucks anyway. I actually feel bad because I sold most of the books to other book stores for a small price but whatever you know whats done is done

>i guess since your so well aware of what kinds of people are on Veeky Forums now,

It's just gotten worse over the years don't try to pretend it hasn't. Popularity killed this site, and the death first came for the most entry level boards. Veeky Forums was a slow burn, but look at this place now. Even if it was stupid before, this is humiliating.

>and your STILL here you must be all those people on that little list of yours.

Yeah I'm the last one. I really wish boredom didn't lead me to talk to people as argumentative and purposefully ignorant as you and people like you. I thought it would have been bad coming back, but this is just horse shit and I can't look away.

missing the point
we are talking about not only the old lit but a diverse amount of books. there are like 50 sherlock books and 2 or 3 other mystery books
And there are way more toys and movies than there are books, why is it even a bookstore if all ur gonna have is pop culture exclusively for a certain narrowed down audience????

your not special your literally getting upset over someones opinion about a bookstore, we are trying to figure out how to make it better but look at your hierarchical mindset, feeling like this is a stupid thing and somehow being on here longer makes you a topdog on all the boards?

>your not special your literally getting upset over someones opinion about a bookstore

I'm more upset about your grammar, and assuming a lot. Also fighting over the simplest thing in the world. This board doesn't need you to defend it 24/7 it's gotten pure shit without it.

I also was responding to someone about what happened to Veeky Forums and how it wasn't always this way even if it was stupid. It wasn't like this. Which has nothing to do with book stores actually.

So you need to do two things for me.

First is to learn to read posts before you start to argue, it saves me the trouble.

Second is to learn conventions even a second grade boy could handle, while posting on the literature board.

That's about it actually. Thanks.

u kno wat u did i hope ma grammar kills u and eats at ur conservative views bout a shitty anonymous website :)

>tfw walking into a Barnes and Noble and realizing a significant portion of their business is selling toys now
>all that Minecraft and Superhero merch

I got a gift card to one last year, went to spend it and the place was like a fucking McDonalds playground. Unbelieveable.

To be fair, I can't entirely blame the board for getting worse. I'm also moving away from it. I was probably as bad as a lot of current posters are, and I've just gotten older.

I talk shit about people assuming the mantle of intellectualism for the image alone, but when I was younger I did the same. Mainstream things were inherently bad to me. It was dumb, I was dumb. Those things can be cloaked in what feels very much like a good reason, but their proponents will probably eventually find their way out of the mindset. At least partially.

I agree that the toys have gotten out of hand. I'm hardly going to defend the company, it brought the slow demise upon itself.

There are criticisms that are less valid though. It is pretty unabashedly a pop-culture driven store. They even have a recurring set of events centered around it each year. I take issue with the idea of "it isn't my personal definition of literature, so it can't be regarded as a real store."

They have a decent selection for what they are, and they don't pretend to be anything else. I'd be surprised if the mystery section at your nearest stores didn't have a few Scandinavian crime mysteries included, among others. Unless it's truly minuscule, which does happen.

They're going to be driven primarily by what sells in the end though. The primary consumer for mysteries like an established style, and particularly a few established authors. Stocking too far beyond that is a gamble. This is known within the publishing industry as well.

The same goes for the romance genre. Even the well known Anais Nin ends up in fiction, because she doesn't fit what the shoppers in the "romance" section want. The point being, if you're looking for a large selection of niche authors, it isn't the store for you. But that doesn't make it not a bookstore, and certainly not an egregiously shitty one.

Just a normally shitty one. (And yes, it edges toward general multimedia outlet with the wide net some stores cast, but the focus is still pretty clearly on the books in the end.)

I will say, I'm fairly sure they make a ludicrous profit on those sections of the store. So I think it looks fantastic on the balance sheets. But, as I alluded to before, I think its going to end up eating away their core business if they don't catch up in the online market and the shipping game, and they won't survive if they lose that war no matter how much bank the toys make.

Pls be in Washington DC

>To be fair, I can't entirely blame the board for getting worse. I'm also moving away from it. I was probably as bad as a lot of current posters are, and I've just gotten older.

I see this argument a lot, and to a fair degree it makes sense. But you cannot deny it can't account for everything, and conversation was at least bare minimum sophisticated for a conversation about philosophy.

Here's what happens now. Ten people from the alt-right throw a hissy fit and because they have no lives what-so-ever they will argue for ten straight hours with you like a rabid pit bull who can't learn to let go. That's what killed this board. Politics marketing and appealing. Mostly from the far-right. I've been here since 2008, and while I initially had far right views, I was younger and more naive. Going through life, and going through the span of time of this website for 8 years, I've changed, but this place has as well more than I have. I do see it in a different lens, but conversation capable of being made time ago is simply not possible now. I remember in freshmen high school, on /v/, I made a thread about how cool a game about alien abduction would be. It was at such a point where not only did everyone converse fairly well, but it inspired threads for a long time afterwards. On fucking /v/ of all places conversation was possible. Veeky Forums was far better for discussion of deeper topics for a longer time.

It is no longer that way. I may have been right-wing and changed, but even the far right has gotten worse. I don't remember screaming about mothers being pregnancy machines and screaming this hard about nothing for so long.

I don't understand how this happened. It's extremely depressing.

I can always imagine the board devoted to animals is pleasant and you could actually talk about something without someone autistic screaming about women being an inferior species or god knows what.

At least Rand posting has died, and Sam Harris...mostly

>I can't believe this board calls itself intellectual

I don't know about anyone else here but I'm not narcissistic enough to call myself "intellectual."

I accept my status of stubborn brainlet shitposter, the satisfaction of making pseuds like you butthurt more than makes up for it.

You get satisfaction from people as weak as you. Honestly it cannot and will not last.

It's not a library you cunt.

>I take issue with the idea of "it isn't my personal definition of literature, so it can't be regarded as a real store."
I do too. But when a fucking bookstore has maybe 5 modest aisles dedicated to books (the bulk of which is Harry Potter, GoT, James Patterson and NYT bestsellers) and the bulk of the store is dedicated to toys and a dining area for Starbucks patrons, it loses credibility as a bookstore.

The one closest to me is probably about the size of a high school gymnasium, and probably not even 30% of the stock is actual books. Last I was there, there were aisles dedicated to Blu-Rays and table displays of those stupid POP! Figures.

Then I will get stronger.

Cunt.

LOL

I only go to this one four story location at union square. It still has all the usual crap, but the fourth floor has a very decent fiction section. Poetry seems squeezed into a couple of shelves next to comics and shit but other than that it's a lot better than any other b&n I've been to. If most of them are as shitty as the others I can see why you'd hate them.

those chairs are there for you to read in. employees aren't supposed to tell you to leave unless its closing.

B&N is great. Comfy chairs, soft music, huge selection, never missing a classic, in store cafe, easy to steal from. Just straight up heaven

yeah there's a dude on here whining about the board not being intellectual...on this fucking post about barnes and nobles, gtfo and whine to your dog or something

The B&N near me is terrible. It's the only one left in my area because the others shut down. They blast alt-pop music so loud that I can't even focus on the words I try to read. The store is 70% bullshit/gifts/YA/pleb books/Funko Pops, 10% Starbucks, and 20% actual literature.

Barnes and Noble cant possibility be that bad, right? I'm Canadian so only have Chapters But I always thought they were pretty much the same. However even with a Starbucks and sections dedicated to Toys, e-readers/phone accessories, indigo knick knacks, and stationary shit, the majority of the store is still decided to books.

I've been to that one, and yeah I agree, it has a good variety. But like you've acknowledged, it's an exception. All the ones near me probably do more business in merchandise than in any books worth reading because they're smack in the middle of small towns where people don't read. Any independent bookstore worth going to in my state is usually situated near a college.

>Barnes and Noble cant possibility be that bad, right?
I imagine there are plenty like the ones near me, yeah. They're really bad. It's understandable: toys and "geeky" normie merchandise probably rake in more money than literary fiction does. It's cancerous, but I get it.

Its not that bad they're just being elitist. The best thing about B&N is they have a huge selection. And its not like borders where they have racks of movies and music. They have every genre fiction garbage ever written for people who like that sort of thing, B&N was the only place to get manga graphic novels a few years ago, they have all the classics, and the very large selection for philosophy, history and religion. Plus they have giant comfy chairs, you can sit in there like its your living room and finish a whole book in there if you wanted too.

Semi-related
>go to unlock my Kindle
>see an ad for the Storks movie
I about threw this shit against the wall.

>kindle

>huge selection
Of shit. And the basic core classics that everybody knows.

Being boiled alive in tar by ISIS?

>Its not that bad they're just being elitist.
You can fuck off.
>The best thing about B&N is they have a huge selection.
Yes, so long as the authors your looking for are on high school reading criterias, have an Oscar-bait or Blockbuster movie coming out, or are named Stephen King, James Patterson, Dean Koontz, or Danielle Steel.
>Plus they have giant comfy chairs, you can sit in there like its your living room and finish a whole book in there if you wanted too.
Indie bookstores usually do this too.

>>Yes, so long as the authors your looking for are on high school reading criterias, have an Oscar-bait or Blockbuster movie coming out, or are named Stephen King, James Patterson, Dean Koontz, or Danielle Steel.

So basically the selection is fine as long as you're not an elitist prick looking for an obscure author or very specific editions.

>muh alt-right boogeyman

Mobile posters are to blame, nothing to do with politics. Veeky Forums conversations used to be intensive and something to be done at your PC. Now we have retards who bump threads with two words and a picture of Pepe.

Also I became right-wing after getting into literature if you'll believe it.

>indie book store

who gives a fuck? an indie book store is better but they have the exact same books as B&N? i couldn't give a shit whether i go to an "indie" or a B&N for a book, i just think its funny that you want to shit on it just because its a big name. there isn't anything you can find in an indie that you can't find in a B&N, its the other way around actually

The thing about B&N is... they're a store. Being a larger store, they HAVE to stock what sells or they go out of business. If crap is all that sells, then crap is what they'll stock.
Personally, I go there because they stock Terry Pratchett, and it baffles my mind how most indie stores around here don't.

>there isn't anything you can find in an indie that you can't find in a B&N,
Lies. If it's not recent or high school-taught literature, it's not at B&N.

because pratchett is shit

Finnegan's Wake is literally at B&N

so youve never been in there before because its literally walmart for books but not in a they have eveyrthing kind of way not they have everything you dont want kind of way. all the classic literature, all the modern, post modern, philosophy, religion, history, fantasy, science etc. all the shit you'd find in an indie and tons of the shit you wont.

>there isn't anything you can find in an indie that you can't find in a B&N
Oh, fuck off. Last time I was in a Barnes and Noble they weren't even selling Philip Roth.

>its the other way around actually
Yeah, if you're an enormous Reddit-browsing faggot who collects Pop figures and wears Game of Thrones t-shirts.

of course it is its a meme book

So is Daniel Deronda

>an indie book store is better but they have the exact same books as B&N?
Yes, because you don't have to walk through aisles of Lego sets, capeshit toys, Kindleshit and Harry Potter merch to get to them.

im going to go to B&N tommorow and prove you wrong just for you user

I work at a BN and a lot of the posts itt are just wrong as shit

or maybe your cities BN is garbage

>>Gigantic Christian section and there's a little tiny shelf devoted to Paranormal that doesn't even have shit

simply not true. I work in bumfuck nowhere and we have two entire bays full of paranormal books

we have a giant island in the middle of the store dedicated to a classics fixture

Go for it. While you're there, find me a Richard Yates book that isn't Revolutionary Road, something by Nabokov that isn't Lolita, and something by Heller that isn't Catch 22.

tbf even the smallest bn I've been in has pale fire and at least one other nabokov

this is maybe the most pointless argument I've seen lately

>Step into Barnes and Nobles
>No music
>Silent as a mouse
>Little Starbucks in the corner but it's out of the way
>First row is just "flavor of the month" modern fiction
>Quickly find what I'm looking for in its respective section
>Pay
>Leave

What sort of Barnes and Nobles' are you guys going to?

I must have a shit store, then. I've been wanting to get a copy of Mothman Prophecies, since I've read it twice and really want it on my shelf, and any John Keel really. Not there. Went to the little guy and found Operation Trojan Horse immediately.

If I did find Mothman, it'd be the edition with the movie poster.

They do, but they didn't have The Magus, which I was hoping to find.

>Last time I was in a Barnes and Noble they weren't even selling Philip Roth.

we have lots of Roth at my location and if the store doesn't physically have them we can get them from a warehouse to the store in a matter of 3 to 5 business days for you to pick up at your lesiure