Amazon sells books?

U Village died with B&N was kicked out (yeah, they wanted to renew but the owners said no). And that one can say U Village had more "soul" when a fucking B&N was the best thing about the place should tell you how horrid U Village really is.

My amazement at people pining for the good ol' days of their friendly neighborhood megabookchain, Barnes & Noble, will never cease.

When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, the newly-opened University Village Barnes & Noble tore out my heart and feasted on it (literally, yes LITERALLY ACTUALLY) by running independent, friendly, and beloved Kay's Bookmark out of business.*

The silver lining of Hurricane Amazon is the finger-lickin' good schadenfreude of Barnes & Noble execs' tears.



*For historical context, this took place in 1996, one year after the sad death of Village Lanes.

Haha, this sort of thing would've drawn so many protests 20, maybe even 15 years ago.

Surely not!

There is no need to carry around that enormous shoulder-load of guilt about buying a book from Amazon. Your local independent bookseller can order books for you; all you have to do is ask. You can even telephone your order to them and pay for it online with your credit card. And if it's out of print, you can get it from Powell's, same terms -- online or by phone, just as easy as Amazon and it doesn't toss the bezosaurus in the volcano any sacrificial dollars.

Just dropped by there to pick up that Piketty's *Capital in the 21st Century*.

On my way home, I tweet about raycists on my sweatshop smartphone, then made sure to check the election results to make sure the $930 million "transpo" levy passed so I can raise the rents on my little fiefdom of millennial tenants.