Blah.Thank goodness for the chai otherwise my trip to the bookstore would have been a total loss.

Is there a decent technical (as in technology) bookstore in the Philadelphia area?

The computer and technology sections in the big chain bookstores simply do not have the kinds of books I need. Nothing on cloud computing, CRM (specific apps or in general), or anything else beyond “Outlook for dummies” and “How to crash your computer in 3 easy steps.” I seem to remember the section being more useful the last time I needed something… I didn’t even see anything on SQL or even MS Access on the shelves. (No, I was not looking for books on these topics until I wondered if there was anything vaguely technical or useful to someone actually working in the tech sector.)

So I’m turning to Amazon and ordering 4 technical books sight unseen. This actually bugs me more than buying fiction sight unseen since useless technical books cost more than bad fiction books. And there are a lot of very useless technical books out there! Thank you, everyone who has ever written an intelligent, honest review of a tech book on Amazon! It’s not as good as thumbing through the book myself but the reviews are incredibly helpful when I can’t thumb through them.

In other news, I might have scared a poor man with his kids in the children’s section. Soured by the uselessness of the tech section, I wandered over to the kids’ books for bright colors and toys. The dad in question eyed me warily… probably because I was scowling and I had wild, rainy-day hair tumbling over a black hoodie sweatshirt and black t-shirt. I’m glad the grouchy geek look can still scare the parents of young children.

I almost bought a small walrus though. That counts for something.

Amazon reviews, books, bookstores, technology