{"id":6140,"date":"2011-09-12T19:11:23","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T23:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=6140"},"modified":"2011-09-12T19:14:13","modified_gmt":"2011-09-12T23:14:13","slug":"borders-raid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/borders-raid","title":{"rendered":"Borders Raid"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finally made a foray to the local Borders store. I checked it out during the first week of bankruptcy, when prices were an amazing 20% off list. I felt bad that they were charging more in liquidation than Amazon was charging in regular operations.<\/p>\n

But I was next door, picking up some measuring spoons at Bed, Bath & Beyond, so I walked in. “ONLY 7 DAYS LEFT!” the posters warned. Inside, prices were 80% off, with an additional 15% if you bought 20 or more books. Of course, there was scarcely more than 20 books in the joint.<\/p>\n

I looked through the remaining comics \u2014 sorry, Graphic Novels \u2014 but that had been pretty well pillaged. I considered picking up Sophie Crumb’s book<\/a>\"\", but eh.<\/p>\n

The fiction section was pretty sparse; the offerings were mainly contemporary fiction, which I have no use for. I meandered over to the biographies, and it was there that I made my score. There were at least 8 copies of Jules Feiffer’s memoir, Backing Into Forward<\/a>\"\", on a shelf, so I grabbed a copy of that. I remember wanting to buy it for the Kindle when it was first released, but it was listing (and still is) at $15.99, and there’s no way on earth I’d pay that much for an e-book, unless it had the answers in the back.<\/p>\n

Then I noticed a copy of Pierre Assouline’s Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin<\/a>\"\". It was a hardcover, as was the Feiffer book. I know nothing about it, but at this price (80% off $24.95), I couldn’t go wrong.<\/p>\n

I also came across paperbacks of two of Mary Karr’s memoirs, Liar’s Club<\/a>\"\" and Cherry<\/a>\"\". I’ve never read her, but I enjoyed her recent Paris Review interview<\/a>, so I thought I’d give her a chance.<\/p>\n

On the way to the register, I noticed a “new books” shelf with a copy of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes<\/a>\"\". I gave up on The Black Swan<\/a>\"\" pretty early, on account of authorial arrogance, but one of my magazine’s readers recommended I pick up this book of aphorisms. I bought it for my Kindle this summer, but found that the aphoristic style didn’t work for an e-book; I found myself reading too quickly. I thought it would be better in printed format, so I could scribble notes in the margins and otherwise just look at a line on a page. So I grabbed that, too.<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a><\/p>\n

The damage for all five books, including three hardcovers? Twenty-two dollars. Poor, doomed bookstores.<\/p>\n

I did have a laugh on the way out, when I noticed that one of the employees set up the shelf by the entry so that customers would see the following:<\/p>\n

\"Do<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally made a foray to the local Borders store. I checked it out during the first week of bankruptcy, when prices were an amazing 20% off list. I felt bad that they were charging more in liquidation than Amazon was charging in regular operations. But I was next door, picking up some measuring spoons … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Borders Raid”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,26,4],"tags":[1348,993,1349,193],"class_list":["post-6140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-business","category-comics","category-literature","tag-herge","tag-jules-feiffer","tag-mary-karr","tag-nassim-nicholas-taleb"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1B2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5968,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/books-a-nil","url_meta":{"origin":6140,"position":0},"title":"Books-A-Nil","author":"Gil","date":"April 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"As I'm sure I've mentioned on numerous occasions, I'm not happy about the decline of bookstores in the digital age. I've spent countless hours wandering through bookshops of all sizes, listening for The Call, entranced by the simple notion of all those possibilities. Any one of those books could have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1770460020","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2876,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cant-start-a-fire","url_meta":{"origin":6140,"position":1},"title":"Can’t start a fire","author":"Gil","date":"November 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I meandered around a Borders store for the second time in a week! This time, my wife was getting her hair cut on Saturday afternoon, and I figured I could spend a little time among the books to feel guiltier about not participating in National Novel-Writing Month. (I really meant\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7590,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-the-guest-list-2013","url_meta":{"origin":6140,"position":2},"title":"Podcast: The Guest List: 2013","author":"Gil","date":"December 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories \u2013 season 3 episode 32 - The Guest List: 2013 The year is over! I exceeded my podcast goal of getting a new episode out every other week! And rather than eke out one more interview for the final podcast of the year, I decided to make my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=voyantpublishing&l=as2&o=1&a=B002VA464S","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1265,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/impulse-power","url_meta":{"origin":6140,"position":3},"title":"Impulse Power","author":"Gil","date":"December 28, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I was driving down Rt. 17 yesterday, taking care of some errands, when a semi-interesting notion struck me. I passed the closed-down Tower Records and pulled into the lot of the Barnes & Noble in Paramus, figuring a meander through its extensive used book section would do me good. I'm\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/impulse-power#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":954,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/indy-000","url_meta":{"origin":6140,"position":4},"title":"Indy 000?","author":"Gil","date":"May 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"When I tried my hand at literary publishing -- I'm in recovery -- I received almost zero support from any of the major chains. Amazon, on the other hand, had a program in place for me to sell books through them and have the same potential for exposure as just\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7478,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-you-cant-get-there-from-here","url_meta":{"origin":6140,"position":5},"title":"Podcast: You Can’t Get There From Here","author":"Gil","date":"November 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories \u2013 season 3 episode 28 - You Can\u2019t Get There From Here \u201cThe physical landscape of south Jersey is one of the most beautiful places on earth. . . . And it's juxtaposed with rusted-out trailers and collapsing shacks that people are still living in. There are a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=voyantpublishing&l=as2&o=1&a=1938126203","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6140"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6143,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6140\/revisions\/6143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}