Teyrnon

I've been to a few different Barnes & Noble stores this year. They all have a commonality of decor that one would expect of a major chain. The layouts of the stores differed a bit. The placement of the coffee shop is a notable case in point. One had it off to the side while the other two positioned it towards or in the middle of the store. None of the stores really had the wide variety of periodicals I remember from past decades. That's to be expected as I suspect that magazines, newsletters, and newspapers aren't as numerous as they used to be. The selection of books was intriguing too. There were the usual selections of genre fiction, religious books, and business books. None of the stores really seemed to have much in the way of reference materials. What struck me most was the rather large section of WWII history one of the stores had. I wasn't aware that that was a hot topic these days.

Two of the stores had a section for regional books which is something I hadn't really run across in the last decade or so. Back in the day Oxford Bookstore and Waldenbooks particularly before K-Mart bought them had sections for local interest books. Mostly populated by novels and cookbooks written by local authors. This was different. It was all books of regional subject matter. I hadn't realized there were that many books about Georgia currently in print. The most prominently displayed were a series of books of old photographs. Of particular interest to me were a few books on Georgia folklore.

I've also visited a Books-A-Million store this year. This is the first time I'd ever seen an example of that chain in person. I'd previously heard of it in passing but never actually saw one. I was only able to spend about fifteen minutes in there and didn't really get a feel for the place. It felt a little strange and I'm not sure why. Part of me wants to say it lacked a sense of soul. It didn't seem like a place that people went to for the joy of books and reading just a place to buy books. The sense of it reminded me of the books section of a Costco or a Sam's Club. Then again maybe I just wasn't in there long enough.

I'd like to visit some independent bookstores in the metro area. A look through Google Maps tells me there are a few. A couple of them even appear to be locations I might be able to get to at some point.

I took the grueling bus trip into Atlanta. The GRTA express bus downtown wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to get up before dawn in order to catch it. The part about being stuck downtown until late afternoon doesn't help my resolve either. Anyrate, I got my errands done in about two hours. Leaving me with six hours to kill before the first bus back to Snellville left.

I reused the Breeze Card I got the last time I made the trip. It was nice to be in Atlanta again. I still found the whole tap to exit thing at MARTA stations a bit irksome. It still feels a little absurd.

I decided to head over to Lenox Square Mall and maybe browse the Waldenbooks there. I haven't been to a Waldenbooks in ages. Well, I haven't been to any mall bookstore in ages, really. It's been about five years since the last time I walked through Lenox Square and I was struck by how different it was. The majority of the shops I remembered were gone and in many instances the whole shape of the shop fronts have changed making goodly portions of the mall nigh unrecognizable. Sadly, Waldenbooks was gone. A quick look at the directory told me there were in fact no bookstores in the mall now. I can remember when that mall had three bookstores and most malls in the metro area had at least one.