Musing Monday: Bookstore of choice

Musing Mondays is hosted by Rebecca. This week's question is:

How many bookstores do you frequent? Do you have a favourite? If so, which one and what makes it so?

Well, I think that I frequent Barnes and Noble the most. I can use my mom's B&N card discount, they are conveniently located, and they almost always have what I'm looking for. There are two B&N in my area, one is closer to my house and attached to the mall and it's smaller and then there's one near the campus of Michigan State University and it's huge, with two stories and plenty of display tables. I definitely prefer to go to the bigger one. There tend to be a lot more options for the buy 2 get 1 free books and more bargain priced books. Also, the tables and bookshelves have much more space between them so you can just plop down and look at the books. There really isn't room to do that in the smaller one!

There's another bookstore in my area called Schuler's which I believe is locally owned, but I can get the same books that they have at B&N and be able to use my mom's discount. Schuler's gift section is much better though, with a huge selection of random stationary, magnets, candles, wall decor, and miscellaneous book related stuff. So I do like to go there to look at the gift section. I also just discovered a used bookstore that's located smack dab in between our house and my in-laws. I've yet to stop in though because they are only open until 7 on weeknights and Saturdays have been way too busy lately. Hopefully sometime this spring I will get out there and check it out though! I'd love to support a local bookstore, but it's just SO much easier (and cheaper usually) to go to the big chain store.

Oh, and for online shopping, I like B&N dot com also. Once again, I can use my mom's discount, the selection of bargain books is HUGE (I cleaned up on cheap books right after Christmas), and there's free shipping on orders over $25. Not a bad deal.

I almost forgot about the open-once-a-month Library used book store! Paperbacks are only a quarter, and hardcovers are a dollar. This past Friday it was open so I stopped in and picked up a mere 21 books (oops...) for only $6! My one big turn off though is that I saw a group of three people, each wielding a palm pilot type device with a scanner hooked to it. They were going around and grabbing the newest, nicest looking books and scanning them to see what they "go for" online. It kind of made me sad that they were taking books out of true book lover's hands only to go and sell them on half.com or something. I guess that they will still end up in some book lover's hands but STILL! Maybe I'm just upset because I peeked in there bag and saw THREE books that I had on my "look for" list in there! No fair! (PS I understand that it's a tough time economically, but I figure if they have enough money to get three palm pilots and scanners for this task then they couldn't be hurting TOO much).