{"id":2199,"date":"2011-07-19T22:53:22","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T22:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=2199"},"modified":"2011-07-19T22:53:22","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T22:53:22","slug":"irony_sucks_doesnt_it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2011\/07\/19\/irony_sucks_doesnt_it\/","title":{"rendered":"Irony Sucks, Doesn’t It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t buy a lot of books anymore — long story — and Salt Lake is lucky enough to have a handful of good independent shops that somehow survived the corporate incursions of the ’90s, but I still thought this cartoon was deadly accurate:<\/p>\n

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I’ll be honest… I actually like <\/i>Barnes and Noble, even though my buy-local instincts tell me I’m not supposed to. Borders has never done a lot for me; they never seemed to have what I was looking for and what they did <\/i>have always seemed to have been lightly flogged with a weed whacker. (I’m very big on condition… if I’m shelling out ten bucks for a paperback, I want one that looks like I just plucked it off the printing press, not one that’s been creased and dog-eared just getting it out of the carton and onto the shelves.) But B&N was cool. For a faceless corporate giant and all. <\/p>\n

It does make you wonder… many areas don’t have any book-buying alternatives except the big chain stores. If B&N goes the way of Borders — and that certainly looks likely — then what’s left? Wal-Mart? Eww. There’s always Amazon.com, but wonky “recommended for you” algorithms aren’t the same as leisurely browsing physical shelves with pleasant classic music on the PA and a cup of coffee in your hand. One more way in which the digital revolution has brought us unprecedented convenience, but at a great cost…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t buy a lot of books anymore — long story — and Salt Lake is lucky enough to have a handful of good independent shops that somehow survived the corporate incursions of the ’90s, but I still thought this cartoon was deadly accurate: I’ll be honest… I actually like Barnes and Noble, even though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-bookshelf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}