I want to rage....throw a 3 year old, spit spewing, feet stomping, toy trowing, tear streaming, ear drum splitting tantrum. I need a fix...real bad, I'm talking, tremors, sweats, wide eyed tweaker like fix...I need a book store worthy of my love. Yesterday I spent hours driving around this town trying to find two books that I want to look at. (What Was I Thinking?: Things I've Learned Since I Knew It All by Steve Brown and Jesus Drank, Judas Repented and God Divorced his Bride by Steve Brown) I want to buy them but I need to "LOOK" at them first. I need to peruse them, look at the chapters, read portions and make a decision to buy or not depending on the weight of what is written inside. Not on the cover, not by the publishers, not be reviewers but by the AUTHOR!!!! That means I am at the freaking mercy of booksellers and what they decide I or fellow Spokanites deserve to have access to. And there lies the source of my vein popping storm of emotion. Nobody in this town has a clue as to what religious books, spiritual books, christian books....need to be available to the public.
I am being abused!!! Call the authorities...I am being starved...mentally, spiritually...experientially. Why can't an area of over 500,000 provide a bookstore that has guts, that has literary kohonnas. I despair of looking to the church to provide anything more than a grandma in jammies bookstore experience. They are lost in a religious la la land that bows to conventional thought, marketing restraints and is pushed around by bully legalists that have their over caffeinated jittery fingers on their wallet book and book burning torches. Please send us a pagan that understands the need for books from many different streams of thoughts. Please let the heretics tomb of thoughts sit next to the saints scrolls. Let the buyer decide for himself what is good to read.
Above is Powell's bookstore in Portland, Oregon. The best bookstore in the Northwest, that I have been able to find. Look at that shot of just one aisle! God above have mercy on us...there are are more books in that one shot than most "christian" bookstores around here! I am going to Portland for Christmas and all that present stuff and family is fine...but one thing is for dang sure...I am going to buy books and do it with an addicts melodramatic flare!
3 comments:
Amazon sometimes has excerpts from books that they have online, might check that out. That's where I get all my books.
Who knows, maybe one day you'll want to open your own bookstore. That could be fun.
I like Justin's idea. That would be, like, the best bookstore ever.
Amazon is great for purchasing books you know you want. But for the true book lover...the experience of a book store will ALWAYS be better than an internet purchase. Granted, the internet gives us access to books we never would get otherwise but the look, feel, smell, the browsing, the contemplation that comes in a bookstore is sooooooo much better. Bookstores are about more than purchasing reading material...at least that is my take on it. Bookstores take money. I am formulating thoughts on the subject....better a small outlet than a large store that has to cater to the dollar issue. But....it is true that reading is taking it in the shorts in this era of video games, sports, tv, movies, digital entertainment, ipods etc...
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