where do you buy your books?

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just got a credit card and have used amazon a little, but a friend suggested another site, the book repository or something, which ships anywhere for free. for people living in a country where you don't qualify for free shipping and shipping is expensive, this makes most books cheaper there.

other than that, Hodges Figgis in Dublin...

― Ronan (Ronan), Friday, 12 January 2007 17:32 (eighteen years ago)

Yes, my housemates use the book depository and speak highly of it. However, I don't think they do free postage to Ireland. Of course, with all books that come by post, it's good if you live/work somewhere where you can be sure to get the delivery. Pain in the arse having to go to the stupid delivery office or what have you.

I used to always buy from Oxfambooks when I worked there, but now I mostly buy from Waterstones in Drogheda because it's near me.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 12 January 2007 18:34 (eighteen years ago)

My main sources are three: one is a charity shop, another is a bookstore run by volunteers - the proceeds of which support of the local public library, and the last is Powell's (because I live in the Portland area). I use the first two because they are astoundingly cheap and the last because it is so well stocked, with over a million used and new titles. I am lucky and I know it.

― Aimless (Aimless), Friday, 12 January 2007 18:49 (eighteen years ago)

Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble or Half-Price Books.

― milo z (mlp), Friday, 12 January 2007 19:54 (eighteen years ago)

Borrow, don't buy. Use your local library.

― Mary (Mary), Friday, 12 January 2007 20:28 (eighteen years ago)

Why would I not want to buy a book? I love books. I love owning books; I love displaying books on bookshelves; I love lending books to friends and family; I love having my own reference library; I love being able to pick up a favorite and read a few pages before bed.
I buy books because the purchase of a book vindicates (in some measure) the time and effort an author puts into creating it, and may give a favorite author of mine the financial means to continue writing and publishing books i may love to read.
I'd love to say I only purchase books at small, local bookshops (I do try to patronize such shops), but alas I buy many on Amazon, Powell's, Abes, and at Borders and Half-Price.

― Docpacey (docpacey), Friday, 12 January 2007 21:13 (eighteen years ago)

I love libraries and all, but if I don't own a book I might as well have never read it -- the memories just drain away.

Amazon, Powells, Goodwill (if Aimless doesn't hit the big Goodwill here, well, frankly all the better for me), with the occasional eBay or ABEbooks hit. Plus wherever I travel.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 12 January 2007 21:27 (eighteen years ago)

Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble store, Border store, independent bookstores when I run across them, used bookstores, local college bookstores, and the huge annual used book sale in my hometown (biggest one in the state of Minnesota; proceeds benefit the local hospital).

Also, library addict.

― Sara R-C (Sara R-C), Friday, 12 January 2007 22:55 (eighteen years ago)

I have to say, Book Depository is the only place I buy books from online. I live in Australia, and the postage to here is free. And they doIreland to. And much of their stuff is discounted. Otherwise I pretty much visit every bookshop in my city, Adelaide.

― James Morrison (JRSM), Saturday, 13 January 2007 05:09 (eighteen years ago)

I shop the local bookstores mostly which for me means: Spectator Books, Walden Pond, sometimes Pendragon. If I'm drifting all the way up to Moe's in Berkeley. If I can't find what I'm looking for at any of these I usually use Powell's online and occasionally Amazon.

― wmlynch (wlynch), Saturday, 13 January 2007 05:16 (eighteen years ago)

I love libraries and all, but if I don't own a book I might as well have never read it -- the memories just drain away.

OMG that is something I never consciously realised, but so OTM. I suddenly feel a whole lot better about buying books.

Amazon have really annoyed me in the past so I tend to boycott them, I use abebooks instead. Or whatever major chain I happen to be strolling past.

― ledge (ledge), Saturday, 13 January 2007 11:46 (eighteen years ago)

borrow books from the library first and THEN buy the ones you liked... that's what i do

― cellardoor (cellardoor), Saturday, 13 January 2007 23:50 (eighteen years ago)

I use The Book Depository as well--can't recommed them enough. I'm not sure what's up with Serpent's Tail now that it's merged with another British indie publisher, but any of their books I usually purchase directly from their site because they also offer free shipping.

I go to Book Closeouts for remaindered/bargain books: that's where I bought most of my Banvilles and Dubus. Other than that it's Chapters, the local indie and used book stores.

I do all that and borrow books from the library so I hopefully qualify for Bibliophile Heaven or whatever it was that prompted Mary's odd response.

― Arethusa (Arethusa), Sunday, 14 January 2007 01:13 (eighteen years ago)

Hmmm - do you think, maybe, she's a ... LIBRARIAN!!!!!

I'm on a bookfast at the moment, and have resolved to use my library more this year. But generally, I buy from Amazon, Abebooks, and Powell's on-line. For local shops: Half-price Books and the University Bookstore. We also manage at least one book-buying trip down to Portland a year for Powell's juicy goodness and one every once in a while out to Lincoln City on the Oregon coast, to visit Robert's Books.

― Jaq (Jaq), Sunday, 14 January 2007 03:24 (eighteen years ago)

Borrow, don't buy. Use your local library.

HA! (That is the hollow laugh of someone who does not have a local library.)

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Sunday, 14 January 2007 11:40 (eighteen years ago)

whatever it was that prompted Mary's odd response.

ha, my response was somewhat to tongue-in-cheek to Ronan; I did not mean to offend any upstanding members of the book-buying public

Also, yes, if no one borrows books, my job prospects look bleak:)

(a reformed book buyer who has lost/donated/given away the majority of her purchases/free books through many moves who now *mostly* uses the library and intends to do so until (if) she gains a permanent home

I'm reading now about Mudie's Select Circulating Library and its monopoly over 19th C. publishing

― Mary (Mary), Sunday, 14 January 2007 19:23 (eighteen years ago)

Well, didn't I say she was prompted by Bibliophile heaven? ;)

― Arethusa (Arethusa), Sunday, 14 January 2007 19:43 (eighteen years ago)

I'm reading now about Mudie's Select Circulating Library and its monopoly over 19th C. publishing

Really? Tell more. I used to see those Mudie's book plates all the time in the charity shop.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Monday, 15 January 2007 08:48 (eighteen years ago)

Well, it's something we touched on in grad school. but never really followed up on, so I got these two books from the library: 'Mudie's Circulating Library and Victorian Novel" and "The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public." Seems that Mudie's was instrumental in setting the form of the day as the triple decker novel. They charged a set fee by year for borrowers. The publishers kept their prices artificially high because they knew they would place most of their sales with Mudie's. Apparently it was pretty impossible to buy the book on an average salary but very easy to rent.

http://www.victorianweb.org/economics/mudie.html

― Mary (Mary), Monday, 15 January 2007 18:49 (eighteen years ago)

There's some intersting stuff about Mudie's which I read recently in The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Fiction, though I imagine it's all in what you're reading there. The Cambridge book had a lot of other interesting stuff about the 19th-Century marketplace, though.

― James Morrison (JRSM), Monday, 15 January 2007 23:29 (eighteen years ago)

Yes! I just read the Cambridge one and one by Greenwood. Now I just need to get back into reading actual 19th century novels. Steven Johnson's "Ghost Map" about cholera in Victorian London also had a lot of interesting Dickens/Mayhew type social anthropology, when it wasn't obsessing about the science side of the equation.

― Mary (Mary), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 00:12 (eighteen years ago)

Because my house is full i know go to the library. It's great - it keeps all your books for you for when you need them.

― Edward Trifle (Ned Trifle IV), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 16:26 (eighteen years ago)

i buy new at moe's or cody's in berkeley (lately stacey's in SF because it's close to work) or I order through amazon. i also buy a lot from pegasus in berkeley while waiting to pick up dinner. i should buy fewer books (and am, on the whole).

― kyle (akmonday), Thursday, 18 January 2007 21:32 (eighteen years ago)

Wasn't Cody's the one that just closed?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 19 January 2007 02:45 (eighteen years ago)

They have another store in West Berkeley that's still open. Just the (original) one on Telegraph closed.

― wmlynch (wlynch), Friday, 19 January 2007 02:57 (eighteen years ago)

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