james_nicoll

I would have gone for the bookcases too.

God, could I use some sturdy and cheap book cases.

They're easy to build.

I have a vaulted living room ... how soon can you get here?

Depends on how much you're paying. The trains down from Seattle to Portland take about 4 hours, and my weekends are tied up until late March. Otherwise you could just do what I did and use Teresa Nielsen Hayden's instructions. I recommend using a cordless drill, and if you can beg or borrow them, a set of saw horses are a good idea. I built ours crouched on the living room floor and was very sorry afterward.

thanks for the link, I bookmarked it for future reference. The drawback to the living room is that its vaulted and I would need one of those snazzy Library ladders with track.

If I built them, they would not be sturdy.

They would if you used enough decking screws.

THIS IS JAMES YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.

Plus, he would drive at least one decking screw through his hand.

Makes a nice counterpoint to one of my enduring images of the LA riots -- a bookstore standing untouched while the storefronts on either side had shattered plate windows and had obviously been looted to the bare walls.

Tells you what they thought of the bookstore in the course of those riots.

or that the bookstores weren't owned by koreans?

I wanted to hold onto a more hopeful implication...

I thought you meant the looters just didn't have any use for books?

I'd've preferred "too much respect for book learning in general" myself.

Kudos to the warehouse management for looking for a solution that didn't immediately fill a landfill.

I got my copy of Linda Nagata's Vast from bookbarn via Amazon just the other week.

weird.

What's this business about "But given the cost of new books these days", books aren't that expensive are they?

In australia, yes..

Lets see.. random new novel from top selling authors..

The new Jeffrey Archer (I make no comment about quality, just that he is a top selling author) list price: $49.95 AUD Hardcover

Breaking Dawn: Stephanie Meyer $29.99 AUD Trade Paperback

Brisingr 3: Christopher Paolini $34.99 AUD trade paperback

The Time Travellers Wife: Audrey Niffenegger $23.99 AUD paperback.


So yes books are THAT expensive, and if its a choice between buying a new book or buying half a weeks worth of food at $49.95, I know what I'm going to be doing.

Understandable. Also understandable is the willingness to take advantage of any offer of free books (and a wide enough selection to guarantee a chance of snagging a few good ones) from someone legally empowered to do so.

yeah but then you wait until the MMPB or at least the not-mass-market-paper-back which comes out for less than a tenner.

(why would anyone buy a hardcover jeffrey archer? one can only presume it's used as an extremely up market toilet paper by pretentious tory voters, otherwise the human race really is irredeemably without worth...)

I presume because Jeffrey Archer's mum wants one.

yeah but then you wait until the MMPB or at least the not-mass-market-paper-back which comes out for less than a tenner.

Where? Barring the sort of crap that gets sold in K-Mart, I haven't seen a new book for sale below $15 AUD in about ten years. Standard price for small-format paperbacks these days seems to be roughly $25 AUD.

And, before anyone suggests Amazon, have a look at their shipping rates for Australia. A $10 USD book isn't much use if it's accompanied by a $10 USD postage charge.

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk gets most of my new-book business these days.

The comments at the end of that story sound like sour grapes from folks who couldn't get there!

As I live about ten minutes away I went to see if there was anything interesting yesterday but the warehouse was closed, alas.