Friday, July 16, 2010

Ashville, NC - Book Friendly but not Romance



I have been in Asheville, North Carolina this week. I had to come up here for work, but I took my family with me since my kids are out of school and my husband has plenty of vacation time saved. The first part of the week I spent working. I had to prepare one of our distribution facilities for an audit and then I spent Tuesday and Wednesday visiting growers up here.

We are staying near downtown Asheville and every night we head there for a nice dinner. The restaurants are plentiful and the food is delicious. The best description I have for the feel of Asheville is very hippy and artistic. The restaurants and shops all cater to local people. There are very few chains. Everything is hand crafted and unique.

The town could be a book lover's paradise. They have a large independent bookstore and four other used bookstores that I saw just walking around. I was really excited but soon I discovered that sure they had bookstores, but the selection of romance was slim pickings. Malaprops just had one shelf of romance and even that was questionable. They had Twilight and the Sookie books and a few other well know authors like La Nora etc. I was super disappointed.

We went shopping in a more residential part of Asheville yesterday. There is a two story Barnes and Noble attached to the Mall we stopped at. This is a big Barnes and Nobles. I think one of the biggest I have ever been in and disappointingly enough the romance section sucked! I was looking for Beyond the Night by Joss Ware and Vampire Mistress by Joey Hill. They didn't have either one.

I am beyond frustrated. I need a positive book shopping experience, pronto!

6 comments:

. Ruz . said...

I love Romance Books!!!! I'm following you. =) My book home is at Ruz's Bookshelves

nath said...

Yay, you're on vacation! Lucky you :D

I think you're going to have to wait till you're back home for a positive book shopping experience... or the RWA that's coming near you :)

It's really sucks when UBS don't have a good selection of romance... Wonder if it means that the romance reader denomination in Asheville is very small or that they do their purchasing online?

Tracy Cooper-Posey said...

That's one of the advantages of reading electronically. You don't have to depend upon what the brick and mortar store is carrying. You can surf to any store you like in the world.

Sorry you're missing out on your shopping.

Cheers,

Tracy

Anonymous said...

That really stinks. Nothing worse than finding all these bookstores only to discover slim pickings for what you're looking for...really sorry to hear that.

~ames~ said...

Sounds like a cool town but that sucks about the bookstores.

Jill D. said...

Ruz - Thanks for following me. I love romance books too. You'll have to stop by sometime and let me know what you are reading.

Nath - I think the romance readers of Ashville are still in the closet, LOL!

Tracy - One of these days I will move to ebooks, but for right now I am still enjoying books the old fashioned way. The hunt is part of the fun, although on this trip it didn't turn out so great!

Tabzy - Thanks for understanding, LOL! You are cheering me up :)

Ames - It really is a cool town. I will just have to enlighten them that if they want to sell books, they need to cater to us romance readers. Afterall, we are the big buyers!
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