Good Bookshops, R.I.P.

Once upon a time, I used to love going to bookshops. To a geek child like me, they were better than any sweet shop - a million different adventures, all fresh and new and featuring that great 'new book' smell.

But when I walked into my local chain store yesterday, that feeling was long gone. What greeted me could be summed up by the following categories:

> Inane crime 'thrillers', where a bland serial killer murders people for no real reason and has some random callsign, like leaving a packet of Skips on each body. The killer is tracked down in an inept fashion by a grizzled detective who drinks, smokes, takes drugs and beats small dogs with a cane.

> Autobiographies of 17-year-old footballers, celebrities I've never heard of, and people who should have died decades ago.

> Cook books. Millions of sodding cook books.

> Chicklit. I've admittedly never fully read a chicklit book, and have read some highly entertaining chapters from writers on sites such as Authonomy, but the ones that line the bestsellers shelves just look eye-gougingly awful.

Now I get my books from the library, where titles from lesser-known authors can often be found. The only problem is, sniff them all you want, they don't have that new book smell any more...