It's been a while, Barnes and Noble.

I went to Barnes and Noble the other day to look for a book to give to my Little Brother as a birthday gift. I had already bought him a Calvin and Hobbes collection from Amazon, but I wanted to also get him something more "productive" like an interesting history or science book, because he's mentioned before that he really likes to learn. 

Walking through the store, I couldn't find the science section for the life of me, as the entire store seemed to be either recent bestsellers, teen fiction, or non-book products. I eventually gave up my quest for the science section and just asked one of the employees there, and she led me to this hidden corner of the store, a crevice with only two bookshelves worth of books. Many of the books there were by Dawkins and Hawking and dealt with topics relating to science and religion, sparking my long-neglected intellectual interest, so I momentarily paused my gift shopping to go see if there were any philosophy books I could take home to read. Again, after trekking through the store many times, I couldn't find the philosophy section. Asking the attendant to help me again, she led me to a literally waist-high, half empty bookshelf. This was the philosophy section.

I'm convinced this is an accurate representation of the Barnes and Noble I visited.

I tend not to be one of those generational, temporal snobs that goes "OMG KIDS THESE DAYS. FAITH IN HUMANITY LOST. EACH GENERATION GETS WORSE AND WORSE. I DONT WANT TO LIVE ON THIS PLANET ANYMORE", but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't a little sad for the state of our society.  I don't care much what kids read, because they're just kids. But it was really weird walking through the store and seeing so many adults browsing the teen fiction sections and sitting down reading near those sections. Maybe this all has to do with the relatively lower education level here in Fort Wayne.

On a somewhat more positive note, it was nice walking through a bookstore again. Browsing in an actual bookstore is so much better than browsing an online bookstore like Amazon. It's nice to actually see how thick a book is, to pick it up and feel its weight, and to flip through the pages. This may sound kind of weird, but it was a nice feeling being able to once again "judge a book on its cover" (along with its back cover and infolds). Amazon is great, but it's often impossible to tell what a book is like and if its good or not, even from reviews (there are a lot of dumb reviewers out there).

After an hour and a half of wandering around and looking at my own stuff, I finally found a book to get Jobe. It's a non-fiction book on ninjas that was surprisingly heavy, with a lot of drawings and illustrations and stuff. It was pretty cool, if I can say so myself.