{"id":320,"date":"2005-08-19T16:11:03","date_gmt":"2005-08-19T16:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=320"},"modified":"2005-08-19T16:11:03","modified_gmt":"2005-08-19T16:11:03","slug":"vive_la_bookvending_machines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2005\/08\/19\/vive_la_bookvending_machines\/","title":{"rendered":"Vive la Book-vending Machines!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Say what you will about the French &#8212; and I know people who will say plenty &#8212; they <i>are<\/i> the clever folks who brought us the wonders of the self-cleaning street toilet. And now they&#8217;ve come up with another &#8220;duh, why haven&#8217;t we had this before?&#8221; invention: <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/news?tmpl=story&amp;u=\/ap\/20050819\/ap_en_ot\/book_machines\">the Maxi-Livres book-vending machine<\/a>. Five such machines, stocking 25 titles that range from <i>The Odyssey<\/i> to a French-English dictionary, have been installed in various locations around Paris. According to the linked article, the books cost only $2.45, an incredible bargain these days, especially when you factor in exchange rates. And the thing that makes these machines really cool?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;Maxi-Livre&#8217;s distributors were designed to bypass the characteristic vending-machine-drop, which can be punishing for books.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We knew that French bibliophiles would be horrified to see their books falling into a trough like candy or soda,&#8221; [Maxi-Livre president Xavier] Chambon said. &#8220;So we installed a mechanical arm that grabs the book and delivers it safely.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While my first choice will always be a quirky, independently-owned bookshop &#8212; preferably one with a live-in cat or other animal mascot &#8212; I really like this idea. If nothing else, it would solve that nasty problem of what to read on the train-ride home if you finish your book during your lunch break&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Say what you will about the French &#8212; and I know people who will say plenty &#8212; they are the clever folks who brought us the wonders of the self-cleaning street toilet. And now they&#8217;ve come up with another &#8220;duh, why haven&#8217;t we had this before?&#8221; invention: the Maxi-Livres book-vending machine. Five such machines, stocking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320","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\/320","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=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}