a quick* trip to the bookshop

[kayotica]

Alan Bennett - The Uncommon ReaderNot having enough money to buy this book, too, and it being rather short, I sat down in the bookshop café and read it there and then in one go. One finds it quite amusing. So amusing in fact that when I was in the middle of the book, the man at the neighbouring table asked to see the title

Comments

[kayotica]

There are Penguin classics not written in English? I've never come across them. Maybe they don't exist in Germany.

We do have the Reclam books that are given their own corner/shelf/whatever in every bookshop up and down the country.

But the foreign language section - if the bookshop carries it - is almost always sorted in this manner:
-> several shelves given over to English books
- first bilingual books
- then Penguin Classics
- then Wordsworth Classics (though Penguin and Wordsworth may change position)
- followed by the rest of the English publications (not the Reclam books though)

- finally, depending on what other languages they have on offer, Espanol, Francais, Italiano, Russian, etc.

[lizzardgirl]

Dude, our bookshops often don't even have Wordsworth classics or the bilingual ones - or some five of each, like that. But then, they'll order the English Other into different categories. In one of my better-liked bookshops (I like our local bookshop best, but they don't have lots of English books - usually only about ten or some. but the people are really nice.) they have English contemporary general, English young adult, English crime/thriller, classics (mostly penguin, some other editions in between) and English non-fiction, and the Russian/French/Turkish/Spanish are before English.

Also, wanna chat?

[kayotica]

Clearly, Berlin is by far superior to any other cities when it comes to bookshops. Admittedly, the prices for English books are higher than at amazon, so in the end, I usually buy online after all.

Amazon's recommendations

[swedepea]

At least on the US version of Amazon, there's a place where you can identify purchased items you *don't* want it to take into consideration when it makes recommendations. Very helpful when you buy things you have no interest in, as gifts for others. I also find it helpful as I buy a lot of textbooks on amazon, and just b/c I bought one textbook on managerial accounting does NOT mean I'm interested in every other textbook ever published on the subject!

Re: Amazon's recommendations

[kayotica]

See, that's far too much bother for me. So I just let it be until the recs get so weird that I have to do something about it and then I spent bleeding ages to get rid of the hundred recs I don't ever want, which then leads me to never want to deal with recommendations again and thus follows my inability to browse "the shelves" at amazon.

[lise_lise]

Bilingual books? What are those?

[kayotica]

uhm ... I've probably used the wrong words but I mean books that are written in two languages. Usually, you have the original text on the left page and the translation into German on the right page. *shrugs* You can get these in English-German, French-German, Spanish-German, etc.

For my lit studies, some of my medieval texts came in volumes like that, too.

[katharhino]

I agree. I would never try any new authors if I didn't have my library where I can flip through, catch the tone and writing style. (We don't have a very good bookshop nearby, but those too.)

[katharhino]

PS love your new layout!

[kayotica]

I love it, too. :)

Though it remains to be seen whether I'm going to keep it for any length of time. Now, that I've discovered the joys of changing one's layout every once in a while ...

[kayotica]

I see I'm carrying coals to Newcastle with my ramble about the superiority of libraries and bookshops.

Must be the reason why we're all such good friends. We just know about the important things in a bookaholic's life. heh.