What do you think?
Rate this book
Field Notes #5
On Browsing
A defense of the dying art of losing an afternoon—and gaining new appreciation—amidst the bins and shelves of bricks-and-mortar shops. Written during the pandemic, when the world was marooned at home and consigned to scrolling screens, On Browsing ’s essays chronicle what we’ve lost through online shopping, streaming, and the relentless digitization of culture. The latest in the Field Notes series, On Browsing is an elegy for physical media, a polemic in defense of perusing the world in person, and a love letter to the dying practice of scanning bookshelves, combing CD bins, and losing yourself in the stacks.
106 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 4, 2022
10 people are currently reading
418 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
![Profile Image for s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1735525095i%2F6431467._UX200_CR0%2C11%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
August 29, 2025
While awash in Golden Age nostalgia, Jason Guriel’s On Browsing did remind me how much I do find comfort in simply browsing shelves. Bookstores in particular give me a sense of calm and joy. Sure, I spend all day working both a library and bookstore, but there is something peacefully pleasant in seeing the variations in collections, seeing what books get highlighted, being lost in a sea of words where nobody is going to ask me any questions. And I don’t even have to want to buy anything (though, lets be honest, I likely will). I had a moment recently where I was in a state of grief and the next thing I knew I had driven myself to the Barnes and Noble I used to work for and centered myself in the stacks (I ended up with a copy of Philippe Besson's Lie With Me which I hope to start soon). But what Guriel’s brief treatise on browsing points out is that ‘apparently, there are droves of us who miss the tactile pleasure of combing through physical matter, of hefting books, of standing at a bin and clacking CDs like dominoes.’ A quick read, and while it does occasionally veer towards an over-sentimental romanticization of a physical media age that feels like your uncle ranting about “kids these days,” it still does so in an earnest and heartfelt attempt to consider how the transition from what he calls the "Age of Browsing" to the "Age of Scrolling" has cultural implications and alters our engagement with media. For better or for worse. With a poetic wit and full of social insights, On Browsing was an interesting and engaging trip through media nostalgia.
‘How often serendipity saw to our needs back when we wandered the world without a data plan.’
This was an interesting book to consider and write about as I sit here in the hours before the new year comes creeping in. Change is something that certainly weighs on the mind on a day like this and as someone that often struggles with change, I also have a real appreciation for resilience in the face of change. Not that Guriel adopts a doomsday tone, however, as he chronicles the shrinking access of not only physical media but also physical spaces one can be without having to pay. Like Taylor Swift sings in >Coney Island—‘we were like the mall before the internet / It was the one place to be,’—the mall was a place one could simply exist, especially teens, and as malls close down and retail spaces discourage loitering, this sort of lounging around browsing with friends is vanishing too. I recall people warning of the loss of physical media and in recent years we’ve seen finished tv series or movies deleted with no way to access them and Guriel mourns this loss where the internet isn’t always forever.
But the biggest focus here is the alterations in the way we find and consume media and what that says about society. He starts by looking at how, in Victorian England, browsing was a way for women to go out, saying they were shopping, and roam the city unchaperoned as a liberating experience. And now instead of browsing windows, we scroll phones, something he argues became even more entrenched as a societal norm due to the COVID-19 pandemic when going out wasn’t available.
When he has lines like ‘We scroll to avoid being alone with ourselves, but we scroll, finally, because our devices have trained us to,’ I wish there was some time spent acknowledging that internet browsing and shipping can be more than just a choice to prefer phones than going out and lack of access to stores or mobility issues, for starters, are reasons that have made this a necessity as well. Though he isn’t wrong when he notes that smartphones ‘were browsing us’ and building data sets for profit. Though, ironically considering the nostalgia of this book, nostalgia is a very profitable marketing tool.
‘To browse is to act and be acted on: to exercise one’s taste while submitting to the authority of others.’
Guriel looks at stores such as the record shops of old as a place where one could travel and return with some new gem they had not heard of before. ‘Unlike algorithms,’ he writes, ‘carbon-based clerks didn’t necessarily care about your preferences, because they knew what was good for you.’ Of course he adds some well placed references here to the film High Fidelity (based on the novel of the same name by Nick Hornby), but it makes a good point on how, without someone like the cool record store clerk you look up to pointing you towards new music, it can be difficult to wade through the limitless ocean of music online. ‘Choice can be oppressive, and the lack of it, liberating,’ he posits. There have been numerous articles about this in recent years arguing ‘the record store staff become tastemakers who can guide buyers through the maze of obscure releases in ways no algorithms can,’ and what seems to be a throughline is that the interaction with the clerk, the journey to the store, the risk of purchasing unheard, handling the physical album from reading the liner notes to putting it in your player all amalgamated to an “experience” that cannot be replicated by pushing play on a phone. Many have argued against this, that music is still music and the external experience is simply subjective nostalgia to have something to bemoan, but Guriel points to what he calls ‘wind resistance’ that made the cultivation of knowledge and taste more rewarding.
He also discusses how, without physical media, there is less a sense of ownership, less an external identity from possession of it, and that its so easy on phones to only listen to the one song you want on an album and ignore the rest whereas ownership made you listen all the way multiple times. ‘Knowledge tends to stick when you’ve toiled for it,’ he argues.
There are albums I certainly grew to love where the first few listens were just okay but after a week or two it sank in and Guriel wonders if that still exists with digital media. He also turns to the book industry and how owning a physical copy, having it on your shelf, is another mark of pride and collection curation. Sure, this can be used as a replacement for identity and some people just don’t care to own stuff (theres whole movements against letting your things own you, for instance), but it is an interesting idea to consider. As someone who loves to have my own books, I get it. On the idea of returning to the same media again, he points to a statement by poet Seamus Heaney that to have a single poem committed to memory and returned to, it makes life better and is a ‘devotion’ to art. To this he adds:
Still, sometimes this book begins to feel very much golden age nostalgia that only looks to what is perceived as the negatives of change and romanticizes the past. Society is different, many don’t have the time to go browse or the access to it, but he does admit ‘perhaps I’m merely mourning the loss of a paradigm because it happened to be the one I grew up in,’ so its not not self aware at least. Furthermore, I did enjoy how many of his book and music references align with my own from the time I was a high school browser. On Browsing was a fun little read with lots of little thoughts to think as we push forward into a digital age and look back on a past when physical media ruled the day.
3.5/5
‘How often serendipity saw to our needs back when we wandered the world without a data plan.’
This was an interesting book to consider and write about as I sit here in the hours before the new year comes creeping in. Change is something that certainly weighs on the mind on a day like this and as someone that often struggles with change, I also have a real appreciation for resilience in the face of change. Not that Guriel adopts a doomsday tone, however, as he chronicles the shrinking access of not only physical media but also physical spaces one can be without having to pay. Like Taylor Swift sings in >Coney Island—‘we were like the mall before the internet / It was the one place to be,’—the mall was a place one could simply exist, especially teens, and as malls close down and retail spaces discourage loitering, this sort of lounging around browsing with friends is vanishing too. I recall people warning of the loss of physical media and in recent years we’ve seen finished tv series or movies deleted with no way to access them and Guriel mourns this loss where the internet isn’t always forever.
‘Many albums and movies can’t be streamed and lie stranded in physical formats, in the tar pit of the past. Hyperlinks to pieces I wrote only a few years ago have already rotted like rope bridges.’
But the biggest focus here is the alterations in the way we find and consume media and what that says about society. He starts by looking at how, in Victorian England, browsing was a way for women to go out, saying they were shopping, and roam the city unchaperoned as a liberating experience. And now instead of browsing windows, we scroll phones, something he argues became even more entrenched as a societal norm due to the COVID-19 pandemic when going out wasn’t available.
When he has lines like ‘We scroll to avoid being alone with ourselves, but we scroll, finally, because our devices have trained us to,’ I wish there was some time spent acknowledging that internet browsing and shipping can be more than just a choice to prefer phones than going out and lack of access to stores or mobility issues, for starters, are reasons that have made this a necessity as well. Though he isn’t wrong when he notes that smartphones ‘were browsing us’ and building data sets for profit. Though, ironically considering the nostalgia of this book, nostalgia is a very profitable marketing tool.
‘To browse is to act and be acted on: to exercise one’s taste while submitting to the authority of others.’
Guriel looks at stores such as the record shops of old as a place where one could travel and return with some new gem they had not heard of before. ‘Unlike algorithms,’ he writes, ‘carbon-based clerks didn’t necessarily care about your preferences, because they knew what was good for you.’ Of course he adds some well placed references here to the film High Fidelity (based on the novel of the same name by Nick Hornby), but it makes a good point on how, without someone like the cool record store clerk you look up to pointing you towards new music, it can be difficult to wade through the limitless ocean of music online. ‘Choice can be oppressive, and the lack of it, liberating,’ he posits. There have been numerous articles about this in recent years arguing ‘the record store staff become tastemakers who can guide buyers through the maze of obscure releases in ways no algorithms can,’ and what seems to be a throughline is that the interaction with the clerk, the journey to the store, the risk of purchasing unheard, handling the physical album from reading the liner notes to putting it in your player all amalgamated to an “experience” that cannot be replicated by pushing play on a phone. Many have argued against this, that music is still music and the external experience is simply subjective nostalgia to have something to bemoan, but Guriel points to what he calls ‘wind resistance’ that made the cultivation of knowledge and taste more rewarding.
‘It took effort to cultivate our enthusiasms in a desert, but it’s clear now that we took the desert’s role for granted. Knowledge tends to stick when you’ve toiled for it.’
He also discusses how, without physical media, there is less a sense of ownership, less an external identity from possession of it, and that its so easy on phones to only listen to the one song you want on an album and ignore the rest whereas ownership made you listen all the way multiple times. ‘Knowledge tends to stick when you’ve toiled for it,’ he argues.
’the Age of Browsing encouraged second chances. Owning physical media forced you to reckon with it, to rewatch it, to appreciate it. (Maybe you sometimes tried too hard to appreciate something, but there are worse sins.) We steeped ourselves in stuff, and the stuff would start to sink in. Art has always required second—and third and fourth—chances to saturate the mind.’
There are albums I certainly grew to love where the first few listens were just okay but after a week or two it sank in and Guriel wonders if that still exists with digital media. He also turns to the book industry and how owning a physical copy, having it on your shelf, is another mark of pride and collection curation. Sure, this can be used as a replacement for identity and some people just don’t care to own stuff (theres whole movements against letting your things own you, for instance), but it is an interesting idea to consider. As someone who loves to have my own books, I get it. On the idea of returning to the same media again, he points to a statement by poet Seamus Heaney that to have a single poem committed to memory and returned to, it makes life better and is a ‘devotion’ to art. To this he adds:
‘To dwell on a single poem, to the exclusion of others, isn’t just okay; it’s a function of devotion. To cling to a work of art—to revisit it, to steep yourself in it—is to approach the state of prayer. It’s to open your mind to the possibility of being tinted. Of being transformed. Streaming platforms, on the other hand, flood the mind. They set it afloat and bear it away—on to the next novelty. They promise abundance but deliver a deluge.’
Still, sometimes this book begins to feel very much golden age nostalgia that only looks to what is perceived as the negatives of change and romanticizes the past. Society is different, many don’t have the time to go browse or the access to it, but he does admit ‘perhaps I’m merely mourning the loss of a paradigm because it happened to be the one I grew up in,’ so its not not self aware at least. Furthermore, I did enjoy how many of his book and music references align with my own from the time I was a high school browser. On Browsing was a fun little read with lots of little thoughts to think as we push forward into a digital age and look back on a past when physical media ruled the day.
3.5/5
January 20, 2023
Apparently, there are droves of us who miss the tactile pleasure of combing through physical matter, of hefting books, of standing at a bin and clacking CDs like dominoes.
This collection of evocative and eloquent personal essays is the ultimate nostalgia trip. It represents a love letter to the disappearing art of browsing brick-and-mortar stores, and the simple joy of wandering through aisles and rummaging through heaps and stacks in search of that elusive book, film or album. The author Jason Guriel praises the effort that went into finding and discovering physical media before we could simply order them online. Guriel references a wealth of obscure and half-forgotten works of writing, film and music. I enjoyed looking them up and finding out more about them. Some look like real gems that I hope to stumble across myself one day.
Some (well, many) of my favourite quotes:
"But serendipity is how the spirit is renewed; and a record store, like a bookstore, is nothing less than an institution of spiritual renewal."
"A mind whose baseline is boredom is well primed to feel, with acute sensitivity, the slightest stimuli. A mind that’s buffeted by novelty, on the other hand, is the fender of a beater: it absorbs a lot of undifferentiated dings."
"We scroll to avoid being alone with ourselves, but we scroll, finally, because our devices have trained us to."
"This was before smartphones, when killing time took creativity."
"Unlike algorithms, Sam’s carbon-based clerks didn’t necessarily care about your preferences, because they knew what was good for you."
"Choice can be oppressive, and the lack of it, liberating."
"If the present age, the Age of Scrolling, abets sampling and second thoughts, the Age of Browsing encouraged second chances. Owning physical media forced you to reckon with it, to rewatch it, to appreciate it. (Maybe you sometimes tried too hard to appreciate something, but there are worse sins.) We steeped ourselves in stuff, and the stuff would start to sink in. Art has always required second—and third and fourth—chances to saturate the mind."
"To dwell on a single poem, to the exclusion of others, isn’t just okay; it’s a function of devotion. To cling to a work of art—to revisit it, to steep yourself in it—is to approach the state of prayer. It’s to open your mind to the possibility of being tinted. Of being transformed. Streaming platforms, on the other hand, flood the mind. They set it afloat and bear it away—on to the next novelty. They promise abundance but deliver a deluge."
"Not upgrading your hardware until it is beyond repair or truly inhibiting your process/work is a pro-planet, prohuman rights, anti-extractivist act of resistance."
"I would prefer not to install the update.”
"Similarly, a world with smartphones leaves us both empowered and oddly blinkered,"
"Surely the sheer ubiquity of the word “content” signals the triumph of a certain strain of postmodernism, which sought to dissolve hierarchies of taste and wrangle everything from novels to TV shows to cereal boxes under one levelling label: “text.” The move from “text” to “content,” then, is merely a mutation, a variant of the virus."
"Every digital file gets its fifteen minutes of fame. Warhol would’ve been crazy about Wi-Fi."
This collection of evocative and eloquent personal essays is the ultimate nostalgia trip. It represents a love letter to the disappearing art of browsing brick-and-mortar stores, and the simple joy of wandering through aisles and rummaging through heaps and stacks in search of that elusive book, film or album. The author Jason Guriel praises the effort that went into finding and discovering physical media before we could simply order them online. Guriel references a wealth of obscure and half-forgotten works of writing, film and music. I enjoyed looking them up and finding out more about them. Some look like real gems that I hope to stumble across myself one day.
Some (well, many) of my favourite quotes:
"But serendipity is how the spirit is renewed; and a record store, like a bookstore, is nothing less than an institution of spiritual renewal."
"A mind whose baseline is boredom is well primed to feel, with acute sensitivity, the slightest stimuli. A mind that’s buffeted by novelty, on the other hand, is the fender of a beater: it absorbs a lot of undifferentiated dings."
"We scroll to avoid being alone with ourselves, but we scroll, finally, because our devices have trained us to."
"This was before smartphones, when killing time took creativity."
"Unlike algorithms, Sam’s carbon-based clerks didn’t necessarily care about your preferences, because they knew what was good for you."
"Choice can be oppressive, and the lack of it, liberating."
"If the present age, the Age of Scrolling, abets sampling and second thoughts, the Age of Browsing encouraged second chances. Owning physical media forced you to reckon with it, to rewatch it, to appreciate it. (Maybe you sometimes tried too hard to appreciate something, but there are worse sins.) We steeped ourselves in stuff, and the stuff would start to sink in. Art has always required second—and third and fourth—chances to saturate the mind."
"To dwell on a single poem, to the exclusion of others, isn’t just okay; it’s a function of devotion. To cling to a work of art—to revisit it, to steep yourself in it—is to approach the state of prayer. It’s to open your mind to the possibility of being tinted. Of being transformed. Streaming platforms, on the other hand, flood the mind. They set it afloat and bear it away—on to the next novelty. They promise abundance but deliver a deluge."
"Not upgrading your hardware until it is beyond repair or truly inhibiting your process/work is a pro-planet, prohuman rights, anti-extractivist act of resistance."
"I would prefer not to install the update.”
"Similarly, a world with smartphones leaves us both empowered and oddly blinkered,"
"Surely the sheer ubiquity of the word “content” signals the triumph of a certain strain of postmodernism, which sought to dissolve hierarchies of taste and wrangle everything from novels to TV shows to cereal boxes under one levelling label: “text.” The move from “text” to “content,” then, is merely a mutation, a variant of the virus."
"Every digital file gets its fifteen minutes of fame. Warhol would’ve been crazy about Wi-Fi."
November 3, 2023
I purchased a few of the books in this Field Notes series. The concept is really cool:
“Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It’s the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared.”—Voltaire
But, this first take was not for me. Fingers crossed I get on better with some of the other pieces.
Kids These Days
Jason Guriel isn’t much older than me, but a good chunk of this collection reads extremely, “kids these days”. There was a lack of awareness that maybe most of the things he was pining over as lost, were still happening, but he’s simply too old to notice or appreciate them. Kids definitely still get bored these days. Because they’re kids and they have no agency. Maybe you, as a grown-up, don’t get bored anymore because you’re free to fill your time scrolling on your iPhone and online shopping. Guriel also seems to think youths of today don’t know how to be real fans who have to hunt down artifacts the hard way and store information in their actual brains and walk uphill both ways to school. Any amount of time with a nerdy youth of today should be enough to dispel any concerns about the state of nerdiness.
In places where I do agree things have changed from ‘back in the day’, there was a very reactive judgement that it’s objectively a bad thing. Before was always better. An interesting take, since his youth was suburban malls of the 90s. Having been there myself, I have to disagree that this was any sort of peak cultural experience.
Objectively Bad Taste
I would bet heavily that Guriel was an indie teen. He probably wrote a zine, wore only thrift store vintage clothes, and considered anything “mainstream” to be the height of uncool. And I mean, me too. But then you get older and realize that taste is subjective and it’s ok to like Taylor Swift if you want to. Or you don’t and you write an essay dunking on “objectively” bad musicians and authors. Sorry fans of Coldplay, Bette Midler, or Adele. You’re wrong. “Some cultural products “matter” more than others,...critical expertise (sharing our knowledge) counts.” Same goes for you, fans of Canadian poetry. It’s all very bad, no good. Margaret Atwood, Anne Carson, Al Purdy, Michael Ondaatje, “officially approved mediocrity”. While I have no problem with anyone vocally disliking art of any kind, it was the objectivity that he tried to spin around it that irked me, as well as being unaware that his tastes are influenced by his own experiences growing up as a white guy in 90’s suburban Canada.
On Indie Bookstores
Guriel’s thoughts on brick-and-mortar bookstores are where this collection let me down the most. The main store that Guriel talks about is The World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto. This was the original branch of Coles, which was among the first chain bookstores in Canada. They paved the way for Chapters/Indigo, which then paved the way for Amazon. Something I would argue is not great. It isn’t something I would expect a teen of the 90s to be contemplating unless you grew up in a small business family. But as an adult, reflecting backwards, there was so much that could have been said. And he gave himself an opportunity to do so when he pointed out Toronto’s renaissance of indie booksellers. Instead of rejoicing about this development and encouraging others to shop local and independent, he whines that “it’s hard not to miss the specific stores that once offered my young self sanctuary and succor.”
In conclusion
It was all the more frustrating in the end when he seemed close to connecting the necessary dots and having some sort of reflective experience. “In fact, I’d written an elegy for what seemed like a waning way of life. I also thought I’d filed a curmudgeonly, even reactionary piece.” Yes! This was curmudgeonly. He was almost there, but then, “I was surprised to see it resonate with so many readers. Apparently, there are droves of us…” Oh no.
Ultimately, the point of this wasn’t to have a genuine conversation about the state of brick-and-mortar stores, it isn’t intended to be an objective discussion, it’s lost in the nostalgia of his very specific youth. And that, unfortunately, wasn’t the book I wanted to read.
“Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It’s the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared.”—Voltaire
But, this first take was not for me. Fingers crossed I get on better with some of the other pieces.
Kids These Days
Jason Guriel isn’t much older than me, but a good chunk of this collection reads extremely, “kids these days”. There was a lack of awareness that maybe most of the things he was pining over as lost, were still happening, but he’s simply too old to notice or appreciate them. Kids definitely still get bored these days. Because they’re kids and they have no agency. Maybe you, as a grown-up, don’t get bored anymore because you’re free to fill your time scrolling on your iPhone and online shopping. Guriel also seems to think youths of today don’t know how to be real fans who have to hunt down artifacts the hard way and store information in their actual brains and walk uphill both ways to school. Any amount of time with a nerdy youth of today should be enough to dispel any concerns about the state of nerdiness.
In places where I do agree things have changed from ‘back in the day’, there was a very reactive judgement that it’s objectively a bad thing. Before was always better. An interesting take, since his youth was suburban malls of the 90s. Having been there myself, I have to disagree that this was any sort of peak cultural experience.
Objectively Bad Taste
I would bet heavily that Guriel was an indie teen. He probably wrote a zine, wore only thrift store vintage clothes, and considered anything “mainstream” to be the height of uncool. And I mean, me too. But then you get older and realize that taste is subjective and it’s ok to like Taylor Swift if you want to. Or you don’t and you write an essay dunking on “objectively” bad musicians and authors. Sorry fans of Coldplay, Bette Midler, or Adele. You’re wrong. “Some cultural products “matter” more than others,...critical expertise (sharing our knowledge) counts.” Same goes for you, fans of Canadian poetry. It’s all very bad, no good. Margaret Atwood, Anne Carson, Al Purdy, Michael Ondaatje, “officially approved mediocrity”. While I have no problem with anyone vocally disliking art of any kind, it was the objectivity that he tried to spin around it that irked me, as well as being unaware that his tastes are influenced by his own experiences growing up as a white guy in 90’s suburban Canada.
On Indie Bookstores
Guriel’s thoughts on brick-and-mortar bookstores are where this collection let me down the most. The main store that Guriel talks about is The World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto. This was the original branch of Coles, which was among the first chain bookstores in Canada. They paved the way for Chapters/Indigo, which then paved the way for Amazon. Something I would argue is not great. It isn’t something I would expect a teen of the 90s to be contemplating unless you grew up in a small business family. But as an adult, reflecting backwards, there was so much that could have been said. And he gave himself an opportunity to do so when he pointed out Toronto’s renaissance of indie booksellers. Instead of rejoicing about this development and encouraging others to shop local and independent, he whines that “it’s hard not to miss the specific stores that once offered my young self sanctuary and succor.”
In conclusion
It was all the more frustrating in the end when he seemed close to connecting the necessary dots and having some sort of reflective experience. “In fact, I’d written an elegy for what seemed like a waning way of life. I also thought I’d filed a curmudgeonly, even reactionary piece.” Yes! This was curmudgeonly. He was almost there, but then, “I was surprised to see it resonate with so many readers. Apparently, there are droves of us…” Oh no.
Ultimately, the point of this wasn’t to have a genuine conversation about the state of brick-and-mortar stores, it isn’t intended to be an objective discussion, it’s lost in the nostalgia of his very specific youth. And that, unfortunately, wasn’t the book I wanted to read.
September 6, 2022
Liz at Biblioasis was kind enough to send me an advance reader's copy of this, which is #6 in their Field Notes series.
As an early millennial born in '85, and remembering what life was like before the Internet took over, this collection of essays on the lost joy of browsing was very nostalgic. While reading I found myself reminiscing about the algorithm-free browsing of my local Acme Video, waiting in line at HMV for the latest KoRn CD, or spending hours wandering in and out of shops at the mall.
This collection of essays was so fun to read, and a little sad at times knowing that some of the things we did in the 90s are lost forever. I find myself longing for the analog past.
"How often serendipity saw to our needs back when we wandered the world without a data plan." - Jason Guriel
As an early millennial born in '85, and remembering what life was like before the Internet took over, this collection of essays on the lost joy of browsing was very nostalgic. While reading I found myself reminiscing about the algorithm-free browsing of my local Acme Video, waiting in line at HMV for the latest KoRn CD, or spending hours wandering in and out of shops at the mall.
This collection of essays was so fun to read, and a little sad at times knowing that some of the things we did in the 90s are lost forever. I find myself longing for the analog past.
"How often serendipity saw to our needs back when we wandered the world without a data plan." - Jason Guriel
March 10, 2023
A short book of essays after my own heart. Perhaps only curmudgeons will like this book, but it raised and explained all my quirky values concerning books and bookstores and records and anything but amazon. In fact I wrote something along these lines myself once several years back: https://roanoke.com/opinion/klagge-me... The author name-checks some of his old favorites, so I will too:
Books, Strings & Things in Blacksburg, the Band Box in Williamsburg, Loganberry Books in Cleveland, The Record Exchange in Blacksburg, Time Traveler Records in Akron, Great Expectations Bookstore in Evanston, Givens Books in Lynchburg, Printer's Ink in Blacksburg... Loganberry, Givens and Time Traveler are still hanging in there.
Books, Strings & Things in Blacksburg, the Band Box in Williamsburg, Loganberry Books in Cleveland, The Record Exchange in Blacksburg, Time Traveler Records in Akron, Great Expectations Bookstore in Evanston, Givens Books in Lynchburg, Printer's Ink in Blacksburg... Loganberry, Givens and Time Traveler are still hanging in there.
April 28, 2025
i thought this book would be a lot more philosophical, rather than expressions of pop culture nostalgia. loved the theme but each essay wasn’t great to me
July 25, 2023
wholeheartedly agree with the message of this book but the execution was just OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUD
May 29, 2025
I really enjoyed this little book about the value of browsing in person versus browsing online. Guriel examines the third places that most of used to hang out - malls, record stores, and bookstores to name a few - and talks about the wonderful serendipity that happens when you are in a physical space engaging with physical objects and/or real life people. The possibility of making new discoveries, the tactile experience of picking up objects, and the opportunity to converse with knowledgeable staff about the selections you are making continue to be compelling. Besides the poignant nostalgia evoked by his descriptions, this book made me think that I would like to support brick and mortar establishments even more than I already do (I definitely peruse bookstores on a regular basis, but there are certainly possibilities for engaging with more establishments in my community). Browsing online and having an algorithm tell you what to consider will never compare to interacting with people and objects using our senses, and this book was a nice reminder of that fact. Given the rise of artificial intelligence, this book is even more relevant now than when it was originally published.
January 13, 2023
“Knowledge tends to stick when you’ve toiled for it.”
This book was really great.
This book was really great.
August 5, 2023
I am massive proponent of slowing down, of physical books and tactile media, of brick and mortar stores. I am obsessed with losing an afternoon in a bookstore. In fact, I stumbled across this book while aimlessly browsing Atlantic News one afternoon. But I don't believe—and I think the author would agree—that our shift to digital media is quite the cause for moral panic that this collection inadvertently portrays it as. To his credit, Guriel is self-aware and anticipates any criticism readers like myself might have of his work. And, to be fair, I have my biases and recognize that I will never know the extent of what we're losing, simply because I didn't experience it for myself.
The essays are charming and thought-provoking; Guriel and I share our enthusiasric endorsement of boredom, just being among books, and moving through physical stores just in case we encounter artists we didn't know we needed. I also enjoyed learning about the etymology of "browser" and the liberating potential of window shopping. And, most impressively, by the end of the collection, I, too, felt a personal connection to the long-gone bookshops and record stores of Guriel's past. I especially enjoyed "Browser History," "Against the Stream," and "I Remember the Bookstore," all of which draw from deeply personal memories, other texts, and more universal experiences, creating a coherent narrative that is singular yet relatable.
However, many of Guriel's arguments fell flat for me. Essays such as "An Elegy for Effort, Memory, and Passion," "Second Spin," and even "Against the Stream" felt like they were on the brink of brilliance but were afraid to dig deeper. Guriel had the opportunity to excavate the origins of his discomfort. Instead, he favored what felt like uncritical nostalgia, falling back on reductionary "internet-bad, bookstores-good" arguments, "back in my day" anecdotes, and false binaries between what he calls the Age of Scrolling and the Age of Browsing. And like Guriel himself admits, many things can be true, like how smartphones can "leave us both empowered and oddly blinkered." Or how these essays are both insightful and insufferable.
The essays are charming and thought-provoking; Guriel and I share our enthusiasric endorsement of boredom, just being among books, and moving through physical stores just in case we encounter artists we didn't know we needed. I also enjoyed learning about the etymology of "browser" and the liberating potential of window shopping. And, most impressively, by the end of the collection, I, too, felt a personal connection to the long-gone bookshops and record stores of Guriel's past. I especially enjoyed "Browser History," "Against the Stream," and "I Remember the Bookstore," all of which draw from deeply personal memories, other texts, and more universal experiences, creating a coherent narrative that is singular yet relatable.
However, many of Guriel's arguments fell flat for me. Essays such as "An Elegy for Effort, Memory, and Passion," "Second Spin," and even "Against the Stream" felt like they were on the brink of brilliance but were afraid to dig deeper. Guriel had the opportunity to excavate the origins of his discomfort. Instead, he favored what felt like uncritical nostalgia, falling back on reductionary "internet-bad, bookstores-good" arguments, "back in my day" anecdotes, and false binaries between what he calls the Age of Scrolling and the Age of Browsing. And like Guriel himself admits, many things can be true, like how smartphones can "leave us both empowered and oddly blinkered." Or how these essays are both insightful and insufferable.
Read
October 17, 2022Eloquently and passionately elegizes the ubiquity of browsing, a deliberate behaviour that the author argues has been replaced by ephemeral scrolling. Torontonians in particular will delight in the name dropping of bygone institutions, like Sam the Record Man and World’s Biggest Bookstore. An utterly charming and nostalgic collection of essays.
November 30, 2023
3.5 stars
On Browsing was an enjoyable read. This collection of introspective essays by Jason Guriel transported me to the New Year's Day I found a first edition of Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death in a used bookstore near Bard College. I thought of a friend who sold much of her Criterion Collection DVDs to pay the bills during a period of unemployment.
In short, we have gained the ability to buy, sell. read, eat, and date at the tap of a finger, but we may have lost the joy of browsing around, meandering, and "wasting time". Some of this is internet-related, but I think that some of this is due to consumer data. Was the music always so annoying and loud, or is that a more recent phenomenon, thanks to the data indicating that "energetic" music makes people spend more money?
Guriel's On Browsing is an enjoyable hit of nostalgia for those who are old enough to remember life before mobile phones, streaming, and a world that is open 24-7-365.
This is the bow on my Nonfiction November 2023 reading.
On Browsing was an enjoyable read. This collection of introspective essays by Jason Guriel transported me to the New Year's Day I found a first edition of Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death in a used bookstore near Bard College. I thought of a friend who sold much of her Criterion Collection DVDs to pay the bills during a period of unemployment.
In short, we have gained the ability to buy, sell. read, eat, and date at the tap of a finger, but we may have lost the joy of browsing around, meandering, and "wasting time". Some of this is internet-related, but I think that some of this is due to consumer data. Was the music always so annoying and loud, or is that a more recent phenomenon, thanks to the data indicating that "energetic" music makes people spend more money?
Guriel's On Browsing is an enjoyable hit of nostalgia for those who are old enough to remember life before mobile phones, streaming, and a world that is open 24-7-365.
This is the bow on my Nonfiction November 2023 reading.
February 24, 2023
Though I found the author used the word ‘defiantly’ a few too many times, I quite enjoyed this little book of essays. I loved that it was speckled with Ontario locations. Even though the author is 6 years my senior, which can make it or break it in terms of relatability in the lost realm of physical browsing of medias, I found nearly every essay relatable. And the one or two that stood out less for me, I still enjoyed the nostalgic sense that came with reading.
December 10, 2022
“Your real world browser history, the one your mind accumulates as you wander the world, can’t ever really be erased “
Interesting commentary on the dying art of browsing.
Interesting commentary on the dying art of browsing.
May 22, 2023
“CHOICE CAN BE oppressive, and the lack of it, liberating. The poets who still try to rhyme know this…”
i liked this lil book. i feel most myself in a library, bookstore, browsing. i feel less steady without my stuff! reminds me of When Old Technologies Were New- reflective and questioning. im equally hopeful and hopeless about our future but i did enjoy these essays
i liked this lil book. i feel most myself in a library, bookstore, browsing. i feel less steady without my stuff! reminds me of When Old Technologies Were New- reflective and questioning. im equally hopeful and hopeless about our future but i did enjoy these essays
December 29, 2024
Real world, tactile experiences. Shopping enjoy the store, not to quickly buy. Less thumb and screen time. Yes, yes, and yes. Enjoy the day!
June 11, 2025
I fear I missed/ was too young in the golden age of browsing .
March 26, 2024
A civilization should have to reckon with its losses. Some of us aren’t done mourning.
.
Our choices, really, are chisels. What we choose to surround ourselves with helps define those selves. We are what we love.
.
Our choices, really, are chisels. What we choose to surround ourselves with helps define those selves. We are what we love.
November 26, 2022
I stumbled across this book while browsing. I was intrigued by the premise and I think that there is great potential for expansion on the major points the author brings forth. However, I struggled to read this collection of essays. I found the authors voice pretentious, condescending, and elitist. The way this author talks down to the audience was so incredibly off-putting, it took me nearly 3 weeks to read a hundred pages.
These two examples, two of several, I took such exception with. I was taken aback that an author of their supposed experience would write in such a condescending way as to alienate some of their audience.
Examples:
"I was a teenager armed with as little bit of spending money and the freedom to roam. By "roam", I don't mean the thing your smartphone does. to roam was to be a body in motion, confronting the world in all its shaggy unmacheted density." - Browser History pg. 22
"The "poptimists" were music critics who rejected snobbery and dared to take tacky pop starts like Celine Dion seriously. They were anti-connoisseurs. contrariamns. They had a frothy name, the poptimists, but turned out to be no fun." - Three Elegies for Bricks and Mortar pg. 72
While others may perceive the authors words to be eloquent and impassioned. I found them to be overly pretentious, complicated, and snobbish. The voice of these essays overshadows the point which is the art of browsing is quickly being dismantled by the introduction of online shopping and streaming services. Instead of reading as an analysis of real issues that are dissolving real life experiences, this book reads as a man shouting from his door to "get off his lawn" and "back in my day..." while simultaneously condemning people for not being "real fans".
Overall, I found this incredibly disappointing. I would not recommend
These two examples, two of several, I took such exception with. I was taken aback that an author of their supposed experience would write in such a condescending way as to alienate some of their audience.
Examples:
"I was a teenager armed with as little bit of spending money and the freedom to roam. By "roam", I don't mean the thing your smartphone does. to roam was to be a body in motion, confronting the world in all its shaggy unmacheted density." - Browser History pg. 22
"The "poptimists" were music critics who rejected snobbery and dared to take tacky pop starts like Celine Dion seriously. They were anti-connoisseurs. contrariamns. They had a frothy name, the poptimists, but turned out to be no fun." - Three Elegies for Bricks and Mortar pg. 72
While others may perceive the authors words to be eloquent and impassioned. I found them to be overly pretentious, complicated, and snobbish. The voice of these essays overshadows the point which is the art of browsing is quickly being dismantled by the introduction of online shopping and streaming services. Instead of reading as an analysis of real issues that are dissolving real life experiences, this book reads as a man shouting from his door to "get off his lawn" and "back in my day..." while simultaneously condemning people for not being "real fans".
Overall, I found this incredibly disappointing. I would not recommend
May 20, 2023
I really wanted to like this book. And while I did really like some of it, this collection of essays started to get very tedious due to repetition. At the end of the day this collection is less a defence for browsing in person for the media we consume and instead an anti-digital rhetoric. There are benefits and cons to going to the independent record/book/video store just as there are for seeking media online.
December 14, 2022
While the book presented some interesting ideas on the value of browsing that is lost with the expanding use of the internet, the author’s monologue was needlessly pretentious. It made reading the book an unpleasant experience. The approach framed his thoughts in a way that placed his curmudgeonly opinions first, undermining his arguments.
March 27, 2023
“Nothing grows on a scrolling mind.”
“We are still waiting for the algorithms to learn how to love.”
“Location matters to our minds.”
—Jason Guriel
***
This book is a love letter to the preservation of places and the closing of social distance. I could not put it down. It made me understand so much more clearly why I felt so sad when ATMs first appeared when I was a teenager. I missed the bank teller, her warm smile, her diligent attention, and her expertise. I could see that interaction was an endangered species.
I found it by chance during a trip to my local bookstore, where I email links of Amazon books to see if they can order them for me. So I arrived to get what I knew I wanted, and I found this treasure.
I think that we are fragmenting our minds by over-using online stuff. We “save time” only to fritter it away by letting our attention dabble in yet more scrolling lonely at our computers.
I’d say more, but you’re probably reading this on your computer-phone.
Recommendation: wander into every real bookstore until you find one that has this book or can order it, and let the world and the people in it suggest to you another book they have that is as of yet a mystery to you and me and our computers.
“We are still waiting for the algorithms to learn how to love.”
“Location matters to our minds.”
—Jason Guriel
***
This book is a love letter to the preservation of places and the closing of social distance. I could not put it down. It made me understand so much more clearly why I felt so sad when ATMs first appeared when I was a teenager. I missed the bank teller, her warm smile, her diligent attention, and her expertise. I could see that interaction was an endangered species.
I found it by chance during a trip to my local bookstore, where I email links of Amazon books to see if they can order them for me. So I arrived to get what I knew I wanted, and I found this treasure.
I think that we are fragmenting our minds by over-using online stuff. We “save time” only to fritter it away by letting our attention dabble in yet more scrolling lonely at our computers.
I’d say more, but you’re probably reading this on your computer-phone.
Recommendation: wander into every real bookstore until you find one that has this book or can order it, and let the world and the people in it suggest to you another book they have that is as of yet a mystery to you and me and our computers.
May 10, 2023
My friend Doug Miller has trailers full of books. Train trailers. He owns over 300,000 books. He puts a rotating assortment of five to ten thousand of them in his curated mix-mashed brainjam bookstore – Doug Miller Books! -- that everybody in (or visiting!) Toronto should pop in to enjoy. I was browsing Doug’s shop last January when we talked about how Amazon lets you find what you’re looking for but bookstores help you find what you aren’t looking for. And I think that spirit is why this (very) short pocketbook by Jason Guriel jumped off the shelves to me at Type Books on Queen West (where we had the book launch for Our Book of Awesome.) I had no idea Jason was from Toronto but his detailed portraits of iconic (and iconically dead) stores like Sam the Record Man and Soundscapes brought tears to my eyes. The book was worth it for that alone. A collection of little essays that veer maybe a bit too much into drippy nostalgia-for-cassette-tapes type land but which also articulately brings together reasons for why we love – and should seek to celebrate and maintain – browsing.
February 1, 2023
The first forty pages or so of this book, out of a total of just over one hundred, were a joy to read. There were ruminations on browsing old style as in walking in stores – for books, records (LPs and CDs), movies on VHS (remember those bulky things) and then DVDs. And then Amazon and the internet replaced the browsing with a “search” button.
But after, the author became fixated on describing his own esoteric collection of music and books – rather than browsing. I was not too interested in his observations of his own collection, and what he listened to, or read, and how significant it was – or should have been.
His focus was mostly on his hometown of Toronto, Canada – and sadly many of those stores are gone.
But after, the author became fixated on describing his own esoteric collection of music and books – rather than browsing. I was not too interested in his observations of his own collection, and what he listened to, or read, and how significant it was – or should have been.
His focus was mostly on his hometown of Toronto, Canada – and sadly many of those stores are gone.
February 27, 2024
Nostalgic! Made me think of all the places that were important to me as a kid and are important now, how I browse, how I spend my time, etc. I expected it to focus more on books, but realized it was more so browsing in general. I enjoyed the earlier essays more, maybe because it felt like things got repetitive as it went on. And all the record stuff went over my head! I also got distracted that in some essays it seemed like a certain phrases or words were repeated that stood out strangely ("bildungsroman" or "sanctuary and succor".) Liked the references to how language has changed - roaming, browsing, content, etc. Liked the stories about the author's dad. Ended feeling kind of sad about the prospect of the internet getting bigger and connection getting smaller.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 2, 2024
This book is a love letter mourning a Toronto of yesteryear, which I can relate to full heartedly, especially as a fellow late adopter, a person skeptical of the over consumption/choice, and as a music nerd. Don't read this if you expect a deep dive of economics and class/race barriers, it's more about the joys browsing once brought to the writer. That said, I was frustrated by the complete gloss over of how these spaces were not inviting to anyone but white men (as a femme who visited these spaces it was always f-ing annoying). It also didn't talk about how while browsing can be mourned, the shift opened the doors for many folks who never had access to share their music to an audience, thereby giving the nerd more.
Read
April 28, 2025This was short and easy reading -- I read it in an afternoon. I like his framing of the past as the Age of Browsing and the present as the Age of Scrolling.
I related to the nostalgia of browsing at the music store and the movie rental store, and also recall boring weekends spent at the mall because there was nothing else to do. There are some interesting sections, and I largely agree, but I don't think it quite pulls off explaining the value of browsing. I'm unsure how much of the changes he notices are due to streaming, how much due to the second-order effects of streaming, overproduction, and ease of access on culture, and how much to simply growing older and having a different relationship with culture as a middle aged person than a teen.
I related to the nostalgia of browsing at the music store and the movie rental store, and also recall boring weekends spent at the mall because there was nothing else to do. There are some interesting sections, and I largely agree, but I don't think it quite pulls off explaining the value of browsing. I'm unsure how much of the changes he notices are due to streaming, how much due to the second-order effects of streaming, overproduction, and ease of access on culture, and how much to simply growing older and having a different relationship with culture as a middle aged person than a teen.
May 14, 2023
A very pleasurable read chalk full of highlight-worthy observations and statements that ring particularly true for me (I’m six years older than the author). I’m giving it the the full five stars because the personal nostalgia that is evoked in all of Guriel’s examples are letter-perfect descriptions and wistful elegies taken from my own biography. There is a very high likelihood that Guriel and I may have been in the same spaces at the same time in Toronto, silently mimicking each other’s behaviour.
January 1, 2024
I really enjoyed this little essay on browing through bookstores and record stores. I have been on my own quest to build a home library, and I almost exclusively do it through browsing at used bookstores and antique shops because the hunt and the serendipity are important. The consequences of not discovering new delights because we answer only to someone else's algorithm of what we might prefer are grave ones, and I'm trying to avoid them.
June 18, 2023
Limitlessly dull and, in the end, nothing more than rank nostalgia. I’d rather a social critic bang on about the change from “browsing” to “scrolling,” but you’ll get no analysis or critical framework here, just a wan Gen Xer mewed up in the survival mechanisms of his adolescence. The author claims this work is an elegy; it’s just a list of reminiscences.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews