Is this an American thing, or just a regional thing here? I can't find an independent bookstore that isn't smaller than my apartment, and all the chain stores (B&N, Borders, Books a Million) seem to exist only to serve up middle-of-the-road crap, so if you don't want to read Twilight of Tom Clancy, you're fucked.

Also why do junior high school girls hang out and chatter in the bookstores?

I've been here for over three years but some things still baffle me.

It's certainly not like that over here. Ha, bet you wish you were still part of the British Empire now!

I'd at least like to return to the Commonwealth and its 3-storey bookstores full of, ya know, books.

Remember: knowledge is shameful in your nation of choice. Every day you don't eat a Burger King in your car and talk to a fat person about something I'm told is called "The Hills" is a step closer to public heathcare and, by extension, Communism. Is that the kind of world you want to live in?

There are plenty of awesome book stores around here.

It might just be regional, to here though. I live in a part of the country that doesn't completely shun education.

Though, I still hate dirty commies like Thommy.

yeah, Thommy because Communism promoted education and knowledge, isn't that right, Pol Pot?...oops!

Seriously though, what is this "The Hills" you are speaking of. Is it anything like the "Twilight" the emotionally wrecked pretend Goths at the place I work speak of?

(For those not in the Know: pretend Goth girl = emo = Enmotionally retarded. Now don't go thinking i'm dissing Goth chicks, any pale, black haired, tatooed, horror movie obsessed girl/woman gets my vote:))

The Hills is fake reality television, so you can enjoy phony people acting even phonier than usual and wish you could be just as vapid and pointless as they are.

Plenty of book stores here. Must be a south thing.

I tried buying some slightly hard to find Sherlock Holmes for a specific series. I'd been buying them for buck or two here and there. I found them in a book store and the chick wanted $10 each. I tried pointing out that this was grossly over priced and she told me she could sell A.C. Doyle any time so it justified the price. Obviously not EVERY time.

$10 for a book? That's mental. A book has to look really good for me to spend the seven or eight quid most new books cost. This is one of the reasons I really like the classics, Penguin classics are generally about £1.

And if I ever read Twilight please shoot me. There's an actual section in Waterstones called 'Lady and the Vamp', squashed between fiction and fantasy, just for that sort of rubbish.

Your right, I don't, but I've got a friend that has. These books that are suddenly popular never have any real substance; like Dan Brown books. They're very easy to read and there's a cute boy that girls can all crush on, and this one has the added bonus that vampires are cool at the minute.

And when I said $10 might be a lot, it's cos £10 is a lot, and it's got to be something special.

This explains why you read books after I've finished with them

Also, you can know something is unpleasant without having to experience it first hand. I know that stabling my eyelids to my eyeballs is a bad idea without giving it a try and, by the same token, I know that a Mormon-penned story about emo Marty-Stu vampires that serves as a metaphor for teen abstinence is probably not for me.

£10 is about $15 and if I could find all my books for that price, I'd be in heaven. Typically, they're closer to what Daniels said, which is ridiculous. Although I'm mainly looking at non-fiction, so maybe the averages are different for fiction, I don't know.

The bookstores around here are garbage, but to be fair, I was looking for such an obscure subject, pre-Columbian American history.

On Halloween, my girlfriend's sister and her husband were going to dress up as the two main characters from Twilight, but I told them that dressing up as a pale couple with serious relationship issues wasn't enough of a stretch.

When I was doing my degree, I paid some obscene prices for books. I was literally offended to be forking over the amount I was paying for some of the stuff I bought - but since I had to have them for uni, I didn't have a lot of choice.

That's the thing: other products have to obey market forces, but because books are the preserve of the middle classes, academics and students who have no option, they're free to charge what they want.

And annoyingly I just finished my book. So, seeing as books have actually got people talking, what are you all reading?

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.

My answer to that question will always be startlingly boring.

Last thing I read was Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, Volume 2. Last actual book was, I think, Tattoo Machine.

Yeah books for school are insane over here I know one of my texts this semester was $200, but I was told I didn't really need it so I never bought it. Amazon helps on occasion though, 2 texts for an average of $50, gotten for $5

And right now I'm reading 1776, which is as you may suspect about the American Revolution and Voices of the Self, a book for school about the differences between proper English and "Black" English told in the memoirs of a language scholar.

And you know I wasn't serious with my defense of Twilight, and I believe Dan Brown's books were mentioned too, which I wouldn't put in quite the same class. I mean they're silly nonsense, but at least they're not destructive silly nonsense.

Whey, I just bought two books for a penny each off amazon

And I've actually read two Dan Brown books. Well, they had different covers and titles but they were the exact same story.

Dan Brown is perfectly good fluff to waste a day on. It's nothing great, but he does tend to keep pages turning. Plus, I like historical fiction. I actually like the National Treasure movies.