I went to a shop to buy the book “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” today, because the tv trailer looked great and I thought, why not ? So I ask the owner if they have it. She looks around, checks on her computer and then goes : “That’s an old one ! It came out in 2004, no wonder we don’t have it !” And she looked at me like I was crazy, wanting to read a book more than ten years old.
And I think that summarizes the problem with book shops nowadays : so many of them only have the latest books. I guess they want to be “modern”, “in” and that’s great, that’s good. But I once went to a book shop which didn’t have a classical section, and that’s just wrong.
I mean, I understand that they can’t have every book ever written, but to explain it by saying that it’s “too old” doesn’t make any sense. A book doesn’t stop being good because it isn’t new. The work of Shakespeare is far older than that, and a decent book shop should have it. And yes, I know I can’t compare Shakespeare to a fantasy book, but I wanted to make my point clear.
Just say you don’t have it, do not make excuses like that.
And that was my rant of the day. ^^’