Book Store Nostalgia

Do you remember when we fretted about how the big box bookstores were killing independent book shops? Now, it seems like Barnes & Nobles and Borders will be inevitably gobbled up by Amazon, who also seems to be leaving the book business for the greener pastures of electronics and apparel.

This evening, my wife and I visited our local Barnes & Nobles to look at books and sip some coffee/tea. I must admit that the scene there depressed and disappointed me. Rows of toys, e-readers, music, and comic books captured my attention. I went looking for a few books but after passing the self-help section and that paranormal teen romance section, the selection of "good books" was rather paltry. When we found our way to the cafe, most folks had books but not history, literature, or current events. Rather, self-help books or magazines ruled the coffee-house crowd.

I remember when I would visit the small, overcrowded bookstores (Crown,Walden's, and B. Dalton's) of my suburban youth. Piles of books dominated the horizon, and my teenaged brain was amazed by the wealth of knowlede and erudition contained by those strip-mall walls. Every once in while, I would get to visit an independent bookstore in Chicago or NYC and be blow away by all the good books I had been missing.

I remember walking into my first Borders bookstore sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Covering what seemed like a football field, the store held more books in philosophy than my local public library. More cool new novels thann those independent bookstores. And more music than the biggest stores in the mall. The store was also brightly lit, had comfy chairs for perusing books, and a cafe to drink those fancy new drinks called lattes and capuccinos. I was hooked. I knew that the stores were probably hurting the hip, independent bookstores but I just didn't care because I gained access to a world of knowledge that I did not know existed. Even better, this was a cool place to hang out with friends. The hours even fit my early-twenty something life-style, allowing me to look at books until 11 pm, much longer than the bookstores of my childhood and even later than the local library. In Borders and Barnes & Nobles, I scribbled my hopes and dreams in journals. I also made decisions about attending law school, leaving law, marrying my wife, and attending graduate school. I wrote big chunks of my dissertation in those bookstores. There were spaces for reflection and growth.

Now, I don't have so much time to hang out in bookstores. Heck, I rarely have time to read or think. I even buy many books online. But, I am still struck by how those same bookstores have fallen on hard times. They seem like dinosaurs on the verge of extinction. The book business is dying and the very model of enterprise they brought to the business is doing them in. You just cannot sell that much jazz, Plato, or Monet's in that amount of square footage. So, they increasingly sell things to a wider audience. The only problem is the wider audience doesn't want the very books that drew me to the place initially. Consequently, the selection of books is getting smaller.

With the independent booksellers hurting and the publishing industry in disarray, I guess I am left with nothing but the nostalgia for the promise of bookstores and the hope that some brilliant entrepreneur will figure out a new way for the bookstore, and those they love them, to thrive.