Yesterday I started my vacation on Vancouver Island by purchasing a hundred dollars worth of used books and felt a solid sense of satisfaction that I had done well in finding replacements for some of the more battered novels in my collection.
Today we visited Munro’s Books in downtown Victoria. Munro's is an excellent independent bookstore, and offers a well-chosen selection of the best in current fantasy and science fiction. In spite of which, I left the store empty handed, enough of a departure from tradition that my wife commented on it with mild surprise. I just couldn't buy anything. After years of book shopping, it suddenly all seemed so unaffordably and unreasonably expensive - it broke me a little.
The problem has nothing to do with inventory as such. Munro's science fiction section had some excellent options: N. K. Jemisin’s latest, The City We Became; the surprising paper publication of Martha Well's Murderbot Diaries novellas; the award-winning 2019 novel This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone; Andy Weir's third novel, Hail Mary, currently their top selling science fiction novel - which I confess to just having finished in bootleg ePub format rather than spending $38.99 CAD for a hardcover copy (or waiting until August 23rd for the release of the paperback version at $25.95, which hardly seems a savings).
All the shelves seemed to be just packed with expensive hardcovers and pricey trade paperbacks in lieu of cheaper mass market editions. I was particularly unimpressed by the impractical absurdity of a four inch thick collection of Ursula K. Leguin’s Earthsea series, an unwieldy sixty* dollar tome that would defy actual handheld readership.
I recently read somewhere that the end of the mass market paperback is upon us, and if that's the case, I'm sort of checked out as far as new book stores go. I may well recover, there may be a gradual return to retail book purchasing, but for now, it would appear that for me new books have become the province of birthdays, Geekmas gift list postings and secret Santa suggestions - a sad truth, but a truth nonetheless.
- Sid
* Actually $59.99, but I don't think that fools anyone anymore, does it?
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