Borders 1971-2011

As you may have heard, Borders is going out of business for good. Tear… And a sigh…

You may have also heard that they have started their going out of business sales.

So last night after work, I went to the last surviving Borders by us to see what they had because I love books, I love Borders, and I love sales.

As I approached Borders, I saw people coming out of there with stacks of books like they raided the place. So I got excited for some good deals.

But alas, all fiction was only 10% off. While their stock was decent, 10% barely covers tax and not to make it worse for Borders, it’s still cheaper on Amazon.

I think people see sale signs and go nuts thinking they are getting a good deal without really thinking that they are in fact aren’t.

Because I hoofed (ok took the train) all the way there carrying my computer, a bunch of plastic containers that my lunch salad was in, as well as a new 16x20 inch frame I had bought earlier, I decided I was buying something and left with one fiction book (10% off), one biography (20% off), and one crafting book on sewing (10% off). Somehow I managed to spend $68 on all three.

Damn $40 sewing book that I got for $36.

But it did look helpful and as I am a self-taught seamstress for the most part, I figured it could be of use.

I think I am going to wait to see how far the prices go down.

On that note…. A few final (semi-deep) thoughts as I am not a fan of this book revolution with everyone reading things on their iPads, Kindles, and phones. I hate that it is killing bookstores and making real books obsolete. I have mentioned all this before.

But, remember that real books won’t be lost when your computer motherboard is fried and you haven’t backed them up. (Mr. lost all of his e-books on the demise of our last computer so score one more for real books!) Real books don’t run out of batteries. Real books are substantial and easy to flip through.

I recently saw an ad about getting text books as e-books. How does this work? As a math major and one subject to a lot of text book referencing especially during open book tests, I can’t imagine doing this with an iPad or laptop. How do you flip around? How do you flag pages? How do you make notes in the book? How do you highlight? And what are you paying $100+ for? Some file that can be lost when your computer dies? No way José. My text books are 10+ years old and still sitting on my shelves collecting dust nicely oblivious to any technological revolution. I will never need to upgrade them to a better technology so I can read them. Not that I would actually want to again. But you get my point.

Real books will have their day in the sun again when this whole generation of electronic book readers is making their way to the eye doctors because they spent too much time reading the Harry Potter series on their iPhones.

UPDATE (written by Mr.): Much to Mrs.' chagrin, I informed her that I didn't actually lose any e-books in the demise of our computer. While I didn't back up any of the book files (which were all free anyway) and lost them when the computer crashed, all of the books were already uploaded to my Kindle. Mrs. didn't realize that I "stealthily" moved these onto the Kindle, but her point remains true that you can lose the book files if they haven't been uploaded to an e-reader, or if in fact your e-reader crashes.