book it

The Eleven had a discussion about bookstores at almost the same moment that Manjoo (or David Plotz) hit the ‘post this article’ button at Slate. Within days of our discussion, and not directly related, X commented on the overall crappiness of Amazon’s recommendations engine, particularly for books. If you gather nothing else from my input, know this: Manjoo is so wrong about the quality of Amazon’s ability to recommend to me another book based on my previous searches or purchases.

I remember trying to relate to X the parallel between what I heard from a local bike shop owner years ago, and the super bookstores (Border’s and B&N). What drew this attempt was a conversation between a good friend of mine and the ‘wrench’/owner of a higher end bike shop in Omaha. That conversation was driven by my friend’s observation that there were quite a few more quality bike shops that had opened in town over the last decade, and that there must be a load more people riding bikes. Said owner pointed out, based on his 30 years in town, that there were no more people actually riding bikes than there were ten years ago – more shops didn’t indicate more riders. Now, I don’t know why people were opening more shops if the size of the pie wasn’t growing, but I might put forth that there was a growth in the visibility of cycling (they’d just opened a wonderful city-wide set of bike paths) and entrepreneurs wanted to get in on the initial rush of excitement. The big bookstores strike me as a similar phenom: they overran the landscape because they felt there were more people reading (why? I’m not sure). Regardless, I never felt people were reading more books post-Border’s/B&N building explosion than they were prior. I’d bet that most of us can see that in ourselves, probably in our families, and if you ask around at work or your friends, the amount of book reading is probably way down across the country.

Amazon, bookwise, is simply another step up the accessibility ladder for book buying – a new rung, but not an actual representation of an increase in reading (any more than digital music delivery indicates that person A actually listens to more music). They no doubt have data that show an increase in book buying, though I’d be curious to really have someone get deeper access to the data’s “who” and “what”, before I’d be totally convinced that reading has exploded. Even with the Kindle and/or Nook, I don’t actually buy the premise that people who don’t read will suddenly become bookworms because of electronic access. Most people don’t even have the time or desire to read long-form journalism; and what of books? Probably not. Access doesn’t necessarily correlate to doing. I also wonder if Amazon’s other businesses props up the bookstore portion of their revenue.

Now, independents. I’ve long missed the local record store, and this is pretty much the same path, different medium. As we decided during our talk about independent bookstores, we both like having those people that love books to do some of the filtering for us. If it’s a store that doesn’t fit our style we can always go to a different local. That filtering is far better, at least for me, than trying to maze my way through Amazon in search of a nugget that might appeal to me. On a trip to Richmond earlier this year I bought four books at two different shops that were are all excellent, and I didn’t know anything about them prior to grabbing them from the shelves. But, that’s not the biggest plus for me. What I miss from record stores and smaller bookshops is actual human gathering – even if we don’t ‘talk’ to each other, the engagement with the clerk, or some other person, is far preferable to an online life. And for that, I’m willing to pay more.

As David Plotz aptly pointed out while discussing this on the podcast, if your position is that Amazon does it for cheaper, delivers to your house, and ‘picks’ books for you, then fine – they win hands down. I have no argument. But, when I think about books I will always choose to hang around the old Olsson’s books in D.C., Kramarbooks, or a Powell’s before a Barnes and Noble, or shopping via Amazon.

stolen from an andrew sullivan reader

"I appreciate the comparison you highlighted between the gay vet who confronted Mitt Romney and the black veterans in history observed by Ta-Nehisi. I am a former soldier, having served in the US Army from 1985 until 1989 before being discharged after a witch hunt. My sister is a retired soldier and my son is currently serving. We have a tradition of military service going back to at least the Second World War. It is my father, who fought with the storied 761st Tank Battalion (the Black Panthers) and his generation for black soldiers and airmen that I want to talk about briefly.

On my mother’s side, there were three Tuskegee Airmen.

My father, as I said, was a tanker. Before WWII, both my father and my uncles had lived every day of their lives in either Louisiana or Alabama, respectively. My father joined the Army the week following the attack on Pearl Harbor because the Army would let him fight as either infantry or a tanker but the Navy would have had him shining shoes or being a cook. My father wanted to fight.

He spent four years in the Army, was decorated with the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. When he came home at the end of the war, he went to college where he met my mother, who had spent the war building airplanes as a ‘Rosie’. Because my father served, he and my uncles got the GI Bill that allowed them to go to college. World War II made my father who he was.

My parents stayed in Alabama, where I was born, until 1968 when they moved us to California. The 1968 election was the first time my father ever cast a vote in the nation he had fought and bled for. When I joined the Army my father was very opposed to it - partially because my sister had joined four years earlier, partly because of his memories of serving in a segregated military. To convince him that my reasons were good, I told him that it takes a special kind of man to go and fight for a country that does not consider him enough of a human being to go to school where he wishes, to vote in elections, to live where he can afford and to work in any job he is qualified for. That generation of black men who signed up and served knowing that they would return home and not be able to vote were very special men.

When I think of the generations of gays and lesbians who served in our military, I think that whether the likes of Romney (or a non-trivial swath of the GOP for that matter) realize it or not, they are in the debt of these folks and are in the presence of the very best of America.

I am not trying to blow my own horn. This is not about my service. I went in because I felt that I had grown up in a nation that did consider me an actual citizen and if my father could put on the uniform when he was, at best, a second-class citizen I could do no less. I just want us, as Americans, to acknowledge that gays and lesbians have served and continue to do so and that these are the very best of our nation. They get up and they do their duty knowing that the man or woman they love back home is not considered their actual, wedded spouse and yet they do it anyway. We should honor them as the exceptional Americans they are."