I caught a glimpse of the Bookstore of the Future this evening: It's a bar. A friend and I were having a drink at a well-known bookstore/bar joint in Washington, DC. The bar offers a free Internet monitor to all comers, right at the threshold between the bookstore and bar. I was slightly incredulous to look over the shoulder of a woman who was running Amazon.com searches--inside a bookstore. This can't be a good sign, I thought. Sort of in the same way that magazines refer readers to their Web sites, when Web readers bring in less than one-20th the revenue of actual magazines.

Fortunately for the bookstore, she was only looking for the new translation of this. (Which is this.)

Now if there were only a way to fill a Pint with draught online...