Browsing Books

I used to love browsing bookstores.  I would go inside a cozy retailer and browse the genre sections of mystery and fantasy.  I could spend hours, and I would drop much more money than I should have with every visit.

Then bookstores got bigger and less cozy until they felt like a big box store.  The people helping no longer knew anything about the books.  If they couldn't find it on the computer database, they didn't know what to do.

I miss small bookstores where the owner at least knew something about the book or knew who else liked those books.  Even visiting Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, a mecca for book lovers, didn't recall those wonderful old days of the small cozy bookstore with an in-the-know owner.

Oh well.

It's still possible to sample a book before purchasing, from the coziness of your living room.  This is one of the reasons that I first loved Amazon as an online book retailer.  The LOOK INSIDE feature allows readers to taste a book before they buy.

Here are two images from the Amazon website and the link to my book's page.