Wednesday's Child said:
Any book store - anywhere - anytime
Yep, I'm with you on that one, though I have a preference for the small independents and second hand shops over the big chains. You should see my study: wall to wall, floor to ceiling bookcases on two walls, and I'm eyeing up a third wall for more. And any stationery store; I love all that fresh clean white paper, and all those fancy pens and pencils, and geometry sets, and fresh crisp manila folders, and all those cool little desk organizer thingies...
Also Rona, Canadian Tire (despite that annoying know-it-all in their ads), Sears (just the tools department), Office Depot, and a little photo shop near where I live called Bird Films, which has some of the most knowledgeable, helpful, cheerful, friendly, most professional staff I've ever encountered anywhere.
I don't hate any stores, but there are some I refuse to enter. Wal-Mart, The Gap, American Outfitters, and Tip Top Tailors. The reasons: sometimes personal conviction and principle--Wal-Mart runs exploitive sweat shops in Mexico, for instance--and sometimes because I or a friend have been so ill-served by the staff in them that I decided never to shop there again. I haven't been in a Tip Top outlet for over 30 years because a very bad-tempered salesman once tried to throw a friend and I out of the store. My friend was looking for a suit, he asked the guy which were the suit racks, the guy showed us to racks of jackets, my friend reminded him he'd asked for suits, not jackets, and the bozo started to argue with him belligerently, called him names, called him stupid... Intolerable behaviour, poisoned that place for me forever.
Edited to add this, after I saw the other posts above:
I don't lend books either. If I feel strongly that someone I care about ought to read a book I care about, I'll buy another copy as a gift rather than lend mine. I once destroyed a book I found, because it had absolutely no redeeming characteristics at all, it was the most execrable crap, called
Summer Camp Slut, so you can imagine what it was about. I used it as fire starter, which was certainly a better use for its paper than what was printed on it. But still... It was a BOOK. And I BURNED it. Felt guilty for weeks. In fact I still feel a twinge remembering it.
