Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum / Around the Shelves

**Posted by DanielCC** 7/22/2015 12:57 pm

This afternoon whilst out shopping I dropped into Foyles and took a look at their Philosophy sections. A couple of wry observations:

Deleuze and Guattari get three shelves to themselves whilst Quine only gets three books.

As a subject as a whole Logic gets one shelf (and a measly stocked on at that) –substantially less than some single authors, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Rancière et cetra can boast.

Speculative Realism gets a whole shelf plus display to itself: the irony being that the only intelligent speculative realist, Graham Harman has but a single book in the entire store.

Despite the store having a plethora of mysticism/Religion/Spirituality/Mind-Body-Spirit books on the above floor there is no shelf in the Philosophy Section for Philosophy of Religion, no Plantinga, no Gale, no Oppy no Craig. In short Religion and Irreligion are big business but not Philosophy of Religion

To end on a positive the Islam case of the Religion section had some translations of Mulla Sadra.

**Posted by Nick** 7/24/2015 3:19 pm

I've been to a number of bookstores in my area (I don't have a car so it's pretty much whenever someone wants to stop by one for an hour or so) and, while each of them had a philosophy section, each an entire bookcase even, the selection was very poor. Halfprice Books probably had the best, with some twentieth-century classics, a few on Plato and Aristotle, and even Aquinas's Treatise on Law, if I remember correctly. Even that one was crowded out by New Agey nonsense, shelves and shelves of material on the "paranormal" and "the unexplained." I prefer to think the reason these crowd bookstores is because everyone else is holding onto the really good stuff.

**Posted by Etzelnik** 7/26/2015 5:29 am

In Jerusalem we have good bookstores.

**Posted by Jeremy Taylor** 7/26/2015 6:10 pm

I would recommend second hand bookshops. I find you are more likely to get more interesting works, especially if you are like me and most interested in cassics.

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/26/2015 6:13 pm

Everybody can come to my house. My library is ridiculous. I get everything on Amazon.

**Posted by DanielCC** 7/26/2015 6:36 pm

iwpoe wrote:
Everybody can come to my house. My library is ridiculous. I get everything on Amazon.

I'm guessing your library is also living proof of the declining taste of university libraries all across the English speaking world?

(Going by the check-out slips and book-plates it looks as if a large portion of Cambridge has crash-landed in my living room.)

**Posted by Scott** 7/26/2015 6:45 pm

iwpoe wrote:
Everybody can come to my house. My library is ridiculous. I get everything on Amazon.

So is mine, and me too.

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/26/2015 6:59 pm

DanielCC wrote:
iwpoe wrote:
Everybody can come to my house. My library is ridiculous. I get everything on Amazon.
I'm guessing your library is also living proof of the declining taste of university libraries all across the English speaking world?

(Going by the check-out slips and book-plates it looks as if a large portion of Cambridge has crash-landed in my living room.)

Well, I get a fair amount of ex-library content, but limited to books that are at least 25 or 30 years old. I think they should hold on to as many things as they can, particularly when they're not available digitally, but I also understand that many university libraries don't have indefinite archive space. I've been very lucky to live right next to the University of Tennessee, whose library is actually excellent, but I'm well aware that the libraries of many even very nice universities like Vanderbilt in my state are quite small. They have to make room for expensive bullshit luxurious dormitories to keep that tuition money coming in, so it's hard for me to demand that the library simply build a new wing to accommodate old books.

**Posted by Jeremy Taylor** 7/26/2015 7:10 pm

I like to look up books on amazon and read the reviews there, but I must confess I tend to shop online at Abebooks.com. I don't mind secondhand book, if they are in reasonable condition, and I find Abebooks to be cheaper for secondhand works, as well as having a larger stock available.

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/26/2015 7:16 pm

I've only used them a couple of times for some very expensive items like Sommer's An Invitation to Formal Reasoning, but otherwise the price differential between Amazon and elsewhere is usually so small as to be insignificant. Plus I have Amazon Prime, so I often get a lot of free shipping even on used items.

Last edited by iwpoe (7/26/2015 7:16 pm)