[cgs]

Buy books at your local bookstore. The one in my town does such a good job with curation that I can pick something on any topic at random and 9/10 times it will be excellent. I think we'll see this more and more as people put less and less stock in Amazon reviews.

[craftyguy]

Alternatively, go to your local library and check out books for free. If you feel like you need to own them, then buy from the local book store. Supporting the local library is more important since they (almost?) all do great community outreach for literacy (children programs, etc).

[winningcontinue]

yes, but without the people supporting the local bookstore who will be supporting the independent authors we need to write the books we read. We need both.

[lostlogin]

And without books being bought, how will I judge people I visit?

[sxiin]

Finnish authors have also "library grants" and "library compensation" which means those independent authors will get paid if somebody loans their work. So you can also support their work "for free" by loaning the books.

[craftyguy]

I never said "do not support the local bookstore." Obviously we need both.

[nojvek]

The absolute cheapest best thing you can do for your kids is take them to the library.

At-least the libraries in Washington are pretty cool.

[dorchadas]

And always check used bookstores. You can find gems there, and often take chances on new things because they're so cheap. And don't forget libraries! I could wax poetic about all those places.

[rv-de]

In Germany we have booklooker.de as a market place for used books. I recently bought an autobiography from there which has out of print for many years. And I found the experience of holding a book in my hand older than myself strangely exciting. That book was printed ten years before I was born. The pages had taken on a yellow shade. Of course I held plenty of really old books in my hand by now. But only then I realized it might become a habit. Especially when there is a choice. You want to read a Mark Twain? Why not by an edition from before the Great War?

[dorchadas]

I'm well aware of booklooker, and it's amazing. There's also bookfinder.com here in America. They're some of the best places to start looking if you want rare/old/niche books.

[djhworld]

The Amazon book shopping experience is atrocious too, if you want to read books on say, computing, the "bestsellers" are full of junk SEO optimisation tutorial books and Minecraft trash.

It's like wading through a swamp!

[rv-de]

That's one thing I really don't get. I'm currently getting acquainted with AWS beyond the usual suspects (EC2, S3, RDS). Of course I was eager to check out their AI solutions. And guess what - they perform surprisingly subpar especially against the backdrop of their marketing promises. Now I know why they can't even keep their categorizations in order or provide a powerful text search - they lack the technology.

[olalonde]

> I think we'll see this more and more as people put less and less stock in Amazon reviews.

Not going to happen, bookstores will keep dying.