There must be something wrong with this town

…when the best selection of new books (novels and non-fiction) can be found at a newsagent rather than any of the so-called bookshops?

I finished my current read (The Tale of Desperaux) on the bus this morning, and since I’m visiting the bloodbank later – something which usually entails a bit of waiting time – I thought I’d just pop in somewhere to see if I could find something worthwhile to buy. Since the bookshops are not yet open when I make my way to work, I thought I might as well try the largest newsagent – Narvesen at Nordre – which is just down the block. As usual (well, I have been there before, you know) I am astounded at the selection of new non-fiction and fiction they carry. Now, don’t get me wrong, the section for books is tucked away at the back and the selection consists of a few hundred titles at most, but at least it’s stuff that was actually published THIS century. AND they have NON-fiction, a type of book whose existence seems to have been all but forgotten by the major bookshops. I ended up with Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, which is hardly what you’d call new, being first published in 2006, but which I have not come across at a convenient time earlier. However, had I been in the mood for fiction, there were four or five titles that I will be buying at some point, just not today, and there were several more non-fiction titles I might as well have purchased, had I not found Bryson.

By contrast, the bookshop with the largest number of books in English has a fair selection of paperback fiction – though never the really new stuff, or at least never the new books I actually want. Whenever I find a book I’d actually like in the “new arrivals” section I have normally already purchased it – somewhere else and quite a while back. And they have no non-fiction whatsoever. Perhaps most illustrative of the lack of exitement generated by their selection: Even when they run a 25%, or even 50%, off all English paperbacks I have a hard time finding anything I actually want to fork over money for.

The bookshop that used to have a fairly large non-fiction section of the English paperback kind (well, when I say fairly large I mean somewhere between one and two shelf metres dedicated to the category) recently moved from a spacious corner house to a fancy high street venue and lost at least half its area. Consequently its selection of books of any kind has dropped drastically. This morning I noted that they are advertising dvds, something they have not been selling earlier. Great, that will mean more space for actual books, then?

Perhaps they are just adopting to the market. Perhaps there really isn’t a demand for Bill Bryson and Al Franken and Christina Lamb in this town. Or perhaps everyone else actually manages to browse for new titles online and therefore shop at amazon or play or bokkilden. And it is possible that I’m the only one left who’d rather buy the hardback of Douglas Coupland’s new novel in an actual bookshop.

Or it’s back to the old chicken and egg question: Do you have a smaller selection of books because they don’t sell or don’t they sell because you have a smaller selection?

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