{"id":1245,"date":"2011-10-28T21:28:41","date_gmt":"2011-10-29T01:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielharper.org\/yauu\/?p=1245"},"modified":"2023-04-04T23:06:35","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T03:06:35","slug":"paying-the-bookstore-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2011\/10\/paying-the-bookstore-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"Paying the bookstore tax"},"content":{"rendered":"

I went over to Berkeley to meet my friend Mike for lunch today. He told me about his forthcoming academic book<\/a>. After we ate, we went to Dark Carnival<\/a>, a bookstore in Oakland. As we were walking from the car to the bookstore, I told Mike that I now proudly claim my geekhood. “Geek pride,” I said. “I’m too f&$%ing old to be bothered hiding it any more.”<\/p>\n

Claiming my geekhood means admitting — no, bragging about the fact that browsing in bookstores is one of my favorite activities. After a stressful week, I lower my blood pressure by going to bookstores. I probably read as much online as I read in books these days, but I still love going to bookstores. Bookstores are one of the few places where geeks and intellectuals still congregate in public, places where reading books is still a public and even social activity.<\/p>\n

But bookstores are an endangered species, and I always make a point of paying the bookstore tax: you walk into a bookstore, you have to buy at least one book. Since I haven’t been to Dark Carnival in months, I bought four books, which was my way of paying back taxes. Despite the threat of the evil Amazombie, I want to be able to keep going to bookstores for a long, long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went over to Berkeley to meet my friend Mike for lunch today. He told me about his forthcoming academic book. After we ate, we went to Dark Carnival, a bookstore in Oakland. As we were walking from the car to the bookstore, I told Mike that I now proudly claim my geekhood. “Geek pride,” … Continue reading “Paying the bookstore tax”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[925],"class_list":["post-1245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-culture","tag-bookstores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10207,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions\/10207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}