Everything must go! Unless it already has...

So I was a little disappointed yesterday while picking through the corpse of a flagging UK media retailer HMV. Not because there were no good books on their rapidly reducing shelves, but because they're were no bad ones. Fact is there were plenty of good books on offer, so many that I had to stay my hand from buying them, because my quality "to read" pile is too high already.

[Pinch your irony here]

This all has me a little worried that my shopping and research drives are starting to set themselves at odds with my enjoyment... it feels like I'm training myself to get a kick out of these bad titles and terrible covers that are so easy to pull apart, and might never be able to get back in the mindset of getting good feelings from things that are, well... good.

But I'm also concerned as to why there were no bad books on the shelves in HMV (let's put aside the argument that there is no such thing as a bad book, because so help me, there is).

Are the stockists and merchandisers that good at their jobs that the right products are on the right shelves? If that's the case, and persons of such quality are working for them, then why in the world are they going out of business?

no book worth having comes easy

It seems both likelier and fantastical that their shop assistants have until now been pushing the wrong products, sending customers home with all those dreadful texts wrapped in horrible imagery that are now missing from the shelves. It would explain why those inevitably disappointed customers and their cash never returned, and why the stores are going under.

It strikes me that had voracious readers know that decent quality books were on the shelves, we might have rushed along to snap them up and thus saved the unfortunate store from plunging into the depths of administration. Such a waste...


An ultimately more terrifying notion perhaps is that me and this blog are just part of a growing trend, and crap looking books are being snapped up all over by excited and ironic readers and critics alike. If that's so then my job is going to get harder... and the hunt for book-fodder is going to get a whole lot more exciting.

Nick
xx