Being such an avid book lover (for those of you who don't catch on quickly), I'm constantly looking for new avenues in which to purchase books. Of course, there are bookstores, book clubs and online services such as Amazon.com (which I placed my first order with this past December). A friend of mine recently introduced me to two online used bookstores: Powells.com and Bibliofind.com.

I went to both sites and decided to check them out. First was Bibliofind. A word about Bibliofind. It isn't an actual store, in the sense that a place like Amazon.com is. They serve like a middleman between the used bookstore and the customer. When you place an item in your shopping cart and checkout, it sends an e-mail to the bookstore, and they take care of the transaction from there.

I went to their search engine, went to the blank marked "author" and typed in the first author that sprung to mind, which oddly enough, was Jack Kerouac. I was absolutely amazed at the selection. They had copies of Maggie Cassidy which I have been looking for for some time; they had first editions of On the Road and The Dharma Bums; they had books of Kerouac criticism; it was a Kerouac fan's paradise. Only one problem: THEY WEREN'T ARRANGED IN ANY ORDER! A cheap, three dollar copy of Visions of Gerard was right next to a $1,000 dollar first edition of On the Road which was right next to a biography on Kerouac.

Amazed yet disgruntled, I went on to Powells to see what they had to offer. The first thing I noticed was that this site had far more personality than Bibliofind. They had a staff picks section. They had Powells T-shirts for sale. They had a top 20 list. And the site was much more colorful too. So I went to the search engine and strained to think of authors, but again I could only think of Kerouac.

They had a great selection, too, I'm not guessing not as good as Bibliofind (I didn't go through every single match found on Bibliofind. Do I look like I got free time or something?) but still pretty good. And there was some organization. The titles were grouped together, so a cheap eight dollar copy of On the Road was grouped with a new copy of the same title. Not only that, but Powells is an actual store , not just a middleman.

I had seen enough. I decided to place an order with them. I ordered a copy of Joyce Johnson's Minor Characters, about women in the Beat Generation. I proceeded through the checkout process, and was told that I would get a confirmation e-mail letting me know that they had the book. Three days pass and I get an e-mail saying that they couldn't get it. They didn't explain why, only that they couldn't. I was crushed. I really wanted that book. When I told my friend who had introduced me to Powells, about it she said: "Hmmm. That's never happened to me before. I always get what I want." Some people just have a charmed life I guess.

I went back to Bibliofind, hell-bent on buying a used book online before I die. Going back to author search, I typed in...you guessed it: Kerouac. But after sorting through page after page of Kerouac, I decided to go for somebody different. Somebody cool, somebody with an edge. Somebody like...Hunter S. Thompson. After going through several pages, I finally found a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for five bucks. That's a pretty good price, considering it would run me about twelve at a bookstore. So I placed an order and was told to wait for a confirmation e-mail from the bookstore. A couple of days passed and I ge\ot an e-mail from Bibliofind. Expecting them to tell me "No Mr. Corley we couldn't get a copy of your book, a purple-assed baboon came in and bought the last copy," I was pleasantly surprised when they told me that they had a copy on reserve and they would send it as soon as I paid them.

Name: PeeR
Comments:
Jeff- I wouldn't approve of anything that starred Johnny Depp anyhow! :)

Name: jeff
Comments:
Shaun, GREAT article! That was an actual review with a personal touch. It is so rare to find an article written that well with such an otherwise bland topic. Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas is supposed to be a great book, but DON'T SEE THE MOVIE, it was crap. Hunter S. Thompson did NOT approve.