A Review of Bookshops in Amman

I reckon that guides or reviews are swayed by the biases and preferences of those who write them, and this one is no exception. However, you have my word that I tried the best I could to keep the subjectivity to a minimum.

The review will be exclusive to the bookshops I frequent the most (once every 2 or 3 weeks), which means that my assessment is based on first hand experience, and nothing that I heard of or a friend told me.

The scale of assessment will be relative; that is the order is descending from the one that measures the highest (leftmost) in any given category. Inside brackets, the quality is comparable regardless of the order. If I drop the name of a bookshop in a certain comparison category, then simply it means I don't have adequate experience to judge it in that regard. So here goes nothing:

Topics [Diversity]: (Virgin Megastore, Readers), (Books@cafe, Prime), The Good Bookshop, Titles
Topics [Classics]: Virgin, (Readers, Prime), Books@cafe, The Good Bookshop, Titles
Topics [Controversiality]: Virgin, (Books@cafe, Prime), Readers, (The Good Bookshop, Titles)

Staff [Amicability]: Titles, Virgin, (Books@cafe, The Good Bookshop, Prime), Readers

Staff [Helpfulness]: Titles, Virgin, (Prime, Books@cafe, The Good Bookshop, Readers)

Search-ability: Books@cafe* (Readers, Prime, Virgin), Titles, The Good Bookshop
Shelves Renewal Rate: Virgin,... (Readers, Prime), (The Good Bookshop, Titles)

*Using their online catalogue, on the premise that it is always up-to-date, a thing I can't tell for granted.

[Update: in case you were wondering about the contact details of any of these bookshops see this link]
[Update 2: Prime is defunct]
[Update 3: Virgin Megastore sells French books, albeit in scant quantities]

Al-Jazeera: Channel of The Mobs

What really bother me about this channel are:

The selective and biased coverage: I really never knew that Qatar was an utopia! And you can not air religious programs on a news channel. Create Al-Jazeera Islamic channel and air as much Islamic programs as you want, but you can not shove Zaghloul El-Naggar's humbug on the scientific miracles of Islam down our ears as if that was real news.

Demagoguery and intolerance is what they promote: While they claim that they promote freedom of speech and other things that sound civilized, they really do the opposite. Programs such as "The Opposite Direction" - I recently learned that its anchor, Faisal al-Qassem, holds a degree in drama, and was a bit disappointed that I could not figure this out on my own - are all about shouting and slandering. I mean where on earth do you find a news channel where people call each other "traitor" while discussing their different opinions and views?

Irresponsible journalism: The channel deliberately mistranslated and added to a scientific paper that was published in 2009. The paper recommended a small change in the twig of hominins in the tree of life, but Al-Jazeera claimed that this paper nullified the theory of natural selection. (I wonder how many times this theory was nullified according to Muslims?) This reckless journalist blasted into smithereens any faint hopes for tolerating this theory in the Islamic world for the coming few decades, and the channel never apologized for this mistake. Not like this is the only scientific or historical mistake they have perpetrated.

The worst sports commentary on Earth: During world cup 2010, I was really shocked by some of the comments I heard by this channel's commentators: lamenting Mussolini's days, calling the whole of South Americans irrational, and labeling Japan as a developing country, to name only a few. Makes you thank "God" for the option of muting in TV sets.