/lit/ - Literature

At least you have some actual books in the classics section, at mine they only have the ugly meme hardcover versions where they take a novella and pad it out to 400 pages

>>20162832
>Business supplies goods to maximise sales by appealing to the most people possible.
>This concerns OP, the intellectual.

Do you live in a third world country?

>>20162832
>Is this store just an outlier?
yes. in fact i would guess that it lies out so much that it exists only in your imagination
that is not to say that modern high street bookshops are not awful. in the last one i went in, the books appeared to be secondary to the coffee bar in the shop and it was populated entirely by pushy middle class parents and their awful snotty brats
that is why i mainly visit secondhand bookshops. they tend to stick to selling books, usually have a more interesting mix of stuff in stock, and if they sell non book items it is usually some interesting ephemera or collectibles

I went to a "rare" bookstore recently.

>one wall of older editions (mostly weird technical books, shit like "mining engineer's guide to water rights regulations, 1962 edition)
>two aisles plus a back wall of literature and poetry, mostly cringe stuff and female authors, with handwritten signs shoved in obnoxiously anywhere with free space ("maya angelou has never won a pullitzer despite multiple former presidents calling her work essential")
>full aisle of woman's and black studies
>decent religion section
>small classics and philosophy section
>half aisle of occult / magic / UFO stuff
>huge mormon section (utahfag)
>all the genre fiction shoved in the back
>rest of it is oversized art / architecture etc...

All in all 6/10, the gay

>>20163050
cont.

the gay "le women authors" section annoys me but at least they push the scifi to the corners. I've done my part and purchased an edition of the Odyssey and a Celine novel.

>>20162981
it doesnt concern you?

>>20163025
>yes. in fact i would guess that it lies out so much that it exists only in your imagination
I mean.. it happened lmao

>>20162993
no

>>20163141
name and shame it then anon

>>20163155
fuck no, if any of the faggots that work there lurk here then I have nowhere to go to pick up ordered books in the future

>>20162832
My bookstore is amazon so i only get good deals and 2 day delivery on any book i want

>>20162832
It's not complicated, I will break it down in three steps.
I. Most people are retarded.
II. This being the case, they stayed out of the arts and intellectual circles and contented themselves to gossip and rolling balls on lawns.
III. Suits have no interest in the arts or intellectualism for their own sake, but see in them an opportunity to make money. Thus with the unmitigated unleashing of free market capitalism these fields were repurposed to gather as much of the masses as possible.

So in conclusion you shouldn't be concerned about ~the direction literature is heading~, because you shouldn't be concerned about the wellbeing of dead things. It could be revived. Y'know, another rennaissance. But as you can imagine, not any time soon.

>>20162832
i have one bookstore in my area that's good, has a consistently good collection of classics and philosophy, no big sections devoted to pulp/genre fiction, just a little shop where anything you pick up is basically gonna be worth a read. it's run by one old guy who's already paid off the place and he curates it by himself, otherwise retired. even then, I buy most of my books online, because I read uncommon stuff (by bookstore standards). it's hard to make a good bookstore and there's no money in it, but that doesn't say very much about literature itself.

>>20163240
>I read uncommon stuff (by bookstore standards)
give some examples

>>20163133
lolberts act like something being profitbale justifies it because... capitalism good (?)
it's circular and weird

>>20163165
are you the only customer? how would they know?
and why do you keep going back there if you dislike it so much?

>>20162981
that's not how it works at all actually and even if it did doesn't mean it's good

>>20163414
because im probably the only guy that asks for pricing on classic literature and obscure works once a month given the fact that theyre still selling the same "classics" since I started going to them

>>20163414
the next nearest bookstore is too far away. I have to go into town for groceries anyway

>>20162981
You probably eat McDonald's seven days a week, don't you, anon?

>>20163434
no, but let people enjoy things anon. Its all good.

>>20162832
My experience is pretty much consistent with yours.

>>20162832
sounds like you have a reddit book store

>>20163506

>>20162832
Most modern bookstores are like this.
There is a place near me called John K King Books. Its an old multi story warehouse absolutely stocked with books hardly even organized. You can spend hours digging through one little area and find absolute gems. I don't think places like that are common these days

>>20162981
The Passion of the Christ was 100% privately financed (to the tune of $45M including marketing) and 20th Century Fox still refused to distribute it. It went on to surpass $600M. It was free money for anyone that picked it up, and yet it was blacklisted.

>>20163506
fuck