I am not referring to the fact that I am getting a new apartment – this time with a special room that will become my library/man-cave/spiritual sanctum. Of course, we are referring to my new e-reader. The Nook, developed by the good folks over at Barnes & Noble.

The Nook may seem a counterintuitive choice, but it was very deliberate (I say choice – but this was actually a gift, though the young lady chose this brand because of my evinced feelings towards the more popular Kindle).

I laid out most of these reasons earlier, but I reckon the world will not end if I repeat myself.

In the first place, I want to be supportive of bookstores. Those physical, brick & mortar buildings where we all browse and sip coffee and lounge in big, comfy chairs before going home to order something from Amazon. The bookstore is a precious place in western culture. When I was 18, I actually lived in one for a while; it was a bookstore that first published Ulysses (actually, both of those anecdotes are in reference to Paris’ famous Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore); a bookstore employee turned me onto the idea of found poetry; and how many famous writers, poets, and thinkers spent some part of their formative years working in a bookstore?

Bookstores are – or should be – our temples of culture and the humanities.

It is true, Barnes & Noble is not Shakespeare & Co. Nor is it City Lights, nor a dozen other centers for literature around the country. But, unlike Amazon, it is a true bookstore – a place where bibliophiles and can do congregate. For many people, it may be the only bookstore within reasonable driving distance.

We will never be able to attend a book signing at Amazon, never be able to develop a relationship with the staff of Amazon as you seek recommendation (and no – their suggested reading or “people who looked at [insert name of product] bought [insert name of other product]” does not count), Amazon will never work double and even triple duty as coffeehouse/performance space/university/employment program for MFA grads.

Barnes & Noble, by providing a large, well stocked bookstore in places like Montgomery, Alabama gave me a place to read and think. To browse a philosophy section that had real, academic tomes and not just some combination of the Bible and new age fluff. To scan the titles of shelves filled with poetry and poets I had never read – instead of nothing but a couple of sad looking copies of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Though I may now choose to focus on taking my commerce to independent bookstores, Barnes & Noble holds a special place in my history and I will respect it for that. And if it comes to a choice between Amazon and B&N – I choose the one with the brick & mortar buildings every time.

My second reason for preferring the Nook is that the Kindle uses a proprietary technology. The Kindle, essentially, locks you into the Amazon store. But the Nook holds far greater promise of going beyond just a single provider through programs like this.

So what am I reading?

The Nook came pre-loaded with Pride and Prejudice (I will read that), Dracula (I could see myself reading that again, but not right now), Little Women (it might be sexist of me – but I don’t see myself reading it, no matter how much it changed my mother’s life).

For 99 cents, I purchased the French Decadent novel The Cathedral, by Huysmans (I previously read and didn’t particularly enjoy A rebours, but loved The Damned).

For $6.29, I went for Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction novel (the first of a trilogy), Red Mars.

For free, I picked up Cornelius Agrippa: The life of Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, doctor and knight, commonly known as a magician, by Francis Barrett (I had actually wanted to pick up something by Agrippa himself, but nothing was available).

Finally, and also for free, I downloaded The angels of Mons: The bowman and other legends of the war by early twentieth century fantasist/horror writer, Arthur Machen.