My Weekly Book

I have a confession to make. I hate bookshops at this time of year. All the seasonal promotions take every last ounce of pleasure out of browsing round them, never mind the crowds. Borders today: a hellish mix of pushchair-wielding parents mowing shoppers down left and right with their bawling offspring, teenagers and gormless blokes shouting into mobile phones about present choices and pensioners trying to levitate their way to the front of the queue - “you won’t mind if I ruthlessly barge in front of you, will you, dear? It’s just that I’m old, you see.” And all I was trying to buy was one little graphic novel by Neil Gaiman and Dave MacKean. For myself, actually.

It’s not just the invasion of the book-snatchers that bothers me. The proportions of hardback to paperback stock have almost exactly reversed. I’m used to being confronted with nice stacks of paperbacks with enticing special-offer stickers piled high just inside the doors. Economic necessity and room for storage makes the paperback the book format of choice round here. Now you have to walk nearly to the back of the store to find them.

And then there’s the problem with the books themselves. Round about September the crap memoirs of z-list celebrities, washed-up sports start and underemployed television presenters are all served up for the Christmas rush. By December that’s more or less all you can find. Add in the terrible novelty quiz books, volume after volume of lifestyle advice from braying upper-class women with not enough to do and television spin-offs…

See you late in January, Local Borders Emporium. I don’t think I can face coming back before then.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 2:26 pm and is filed under 2006 - Ephemera, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.