Harris bookstore Great Farewell Sale

[Gary]

Harris bookstore Great Farewell Sale. 20% off storewide.

http://www.harrisbook.com/

[Airconvent]

This is not good. It has not been long since Borders closed and took away a large chunk of the immediate buyers and now Harris too. The effect would be a drop in buyers for the existing stores until the readers catch up on their purchases. I do hope the rest especially Kinokuniya can survive.

[cataclysm]

Page One is even more drastic, 50% & more on all books. Soon there won't be any book stores left. Sigh.......

[superiorstream]

The dying of knowledge means the dying of progress--sth history had taught us.
Example--Old Egypt;too obssess with building grave(Pyramid) and ultimately stop progressing
The same we see in the Indus civilization,the Chinese civilization ,the Mayans etc--all too
obssess about something and progress in other fields stopped and ultimately decayed.
Today,modern society are too obssess about PROFITTIBILITY--every thing MUST be profit generating.
Already we find general loss of interest in fundamental and theotical,non-profit generating subjects like maths,astronomy and physics.Selling of books--esp on these subjects are money losing and most
textbook or story book selling bookshop dont carry them---only big one carry a few.With the closing of those big bookstore,reference book in such subject will be extinct.
With the new law in the US of prohibiting share of patented computer files--e-book included, it means that spreading of knowledge in such area will be virtually stopped.With such obssession on profittibility,progress will stop--and thats the real 2012.

[orly_andico]

I will tell a parallel tale.

Back in Philippines, we had a law which allowed local publishers to re-print books without paying the original copyright holder (or to pay them a small amount). This resulted in a lot of brown-paper low-quality reprints but it let the typical poor Filipino have access to these books.

When the Philippines signed an international IPR accord, the law allowing reprints was rescinded.

The net result is that now books cost a lot of money and many Filipinos can't afford them.

Back to the situation now - I purchased some books from Amazon (my astronomy text and some computer books for my wife). Each book was probably $100 range. That's the situation today. Information sharing won't disappear, but it will get expensive.

If you want lots of free knowledge - arxiv.org

[superiorstream]

Well,let me put it this way--
after those powerful figure get rich in China,I dont see them buying books--academic books;what I see is that they buy lots of LV bags+branded items.When in HK,its shocking to see them coming with 3-4 credit cards and buying 4 LV bags in one goal.How I wish they are buying astronomy books or university maths book!!What I see is a 2nd hand under the staircase bookshop(in mong kok) with quite some u-books(ref book)with no customers.Sad.
History had proven that progress come from people from ALL walks of life and the rich in many case is over obssess with their wealth and interested in creating more wealth and power for .....To generate more knowledge,we need to spread knowledge to everybody.A dying nation and a dying world will start with the death of academic bookshop in that location;more research in weapons,territory dispute,changing history,twisting facts and finally wars.Hope the leader can exercise their leadership and reserve some spaces for academic bookshop--by way of policy/law-- in shopping mall or retail spaces and not just look at profittibility.Otherwise that's really 2012.

[MooEy]

tell nlb to buy more new books first...

[orly_andico]

i've seen worse...

at the Bucherer watch mega-store in Lucerne, i saw a lot of chinese people outside (the store closes from lunch to 4 p.m.) who basically mobbed the store when it opened.

and they didn't pay with credit cards... mostly cash or chinapay.

all of the luxury goods stores in Lucerne, Florence, Paris etc. all have chinese-speaking staff these days.. the LV flagship store on the Champs Elysee also had this long line of china people outside.. and they mostly bought 4-5 bags like chia says.

[swimaniac]

i've seen worse...


all of the luxury goods stores in Lucerne, Florence, Paris etc. all have chinese-speaking staff these days.. the LV flagship store on the Champs Elysee also had this long line of china people outside.. and they mostly bought 4-5 bags like chia says.

You are lucky you saw them queueing. I saw them not bothering to queue but just barge their way in at Galleries Lafayette and Chanel.

[orly_andico]

You are lucky you saw them queueing. I saw them not bothering to queue but just barge their way in at Galleries Lafayette and Chanel.

hahaha. LV enforces queueing. Thought only the Orchard Road store did that.. (the LV store in Manila does not)

I was also asked by some china people if I would buy even more LV bags for them (apparently there is a limit to the number one person can buy...)

This is off-topic already

But like I said... arxiv.org has lots of good stuff. Astrophysics publications. I use it all the time.