Top design Chaquetas Belstaff Icono free shipping

We have seen some of the best independent bookstores of our generation destroyed by the faddishness of online shopping, their businesses cash- strapped, their owners hysterical and under-caffeinated as their customers drag through the city streets at rush hour looking for a chain-store discount fix. OK, so maybe that's a howling overstatement. But in the normally tame, belstaff Outlet demure bibliophilic world, something of a three-pronged war is raging between the tag team of mammoth chain stores (you know who they are) and Amazon against the plucky independents for the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of consumers. In most places, it's no contest. The little guys get as thoroughly quashed as an Allen Ginsberg chapbook stacked below a Tom Clancy tome. But the East Bay, as you well know, is not like most places. Independent bookstores survive - and some downright thrive - because you can't swing a mixed metaphor around without hitting a published author or a Ph.D. or both. Berkeley, of course, is the nexus. A check of the Yellow Pages and the Internet Chaquetas Belstaff Icono shows no less than 52 independent bookstores in Berkeley. On a two-block stretch of Telegraph Avenue, book lovers can choose between venerable Cody's, eclectic Moe's and the used- book haven Shakespeare and Co. But ardent bibliophiles can find great East Bay stores without even entering Berkeley, which is what we set out to do. These places have character without trying overly hard to achieve literary hipness. There are no gurgling espresso machines at these haunts. No canned music wafts through the stacks to break the browsing reverie. No smug mug of John Grisham stares back at customers from chaqueta belstaff the display racks. Most importantly, these stores don't have clueless clerks who go slack- jawed when asked if they carry the latest Jacques Derrida manifesto. From Oakland to Kensington, San Leandro to San Pablo, independent bookstores reflect the character of the towns and serve as a meeting place where ideas as well as goods are exchanged. So now, sit back and enjoy a sweeping six-part saga of some East Bay indie booksellers. CHAPTER 1