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| Reading at Busboys and Poets. |
Answer: Not one damn bit.
In fact, I make it a point to buy at least one book at any independent bookstore I go to. Independent bookstore exists for the love of books and the love of reading. True love. But more importantly, independent bookstores love people. Bill Reilly, owner of one of my favorite bookstores, The River's End, in Oswego, NY, said that indies are as much about the books as they are about the community. The River's End bookstore hosts a number of events and book clubs, and many of my students--students who adore reading and the reading life--have worked there.
This past Wednesday, my niece Jenny and her partner Michael wanted to take my wife and I to an independent bookstore in Minneapolis, Arise! When we got there, we found it closed.
"Oh no," Jenny said.
"This sucks," said Michael. He kept peering into the store, as if to see, by some miracle, that the bookstore was open, that this had been a cruel joke on us. We grumbled away. Yet another indie had sadly bitten the dust.
Like the one in Savoy, IL, Pages for All Ages. When my mother-in-law was alive, before cancer took her away, it was this bookstore she loved most, three blocks from her home. She was a voracious reader, finishing 1 or 2 books a day. The workers knew her by name, Dinny, and she had accrued so many points it seemed she got a perpetual discount. The service, the attention, the care, the community, that's what made Pages for All Ages special, what makes all independent bookstores special.
What does the closing of independent bookstores say about our culture? If the indie bookstore is about community, as Bill Reilly said, have we begun to isolate ourselves? Have the Kindle, Nook, E-readers, made the indie bookstore obsolete? Have amazon.com, the large chain stores like Borders and Barnes & Nobles, taken away an essential intimacy that buying a book entails?
Seriously, we, at the Clever Title, don't have an answer. We want to save the independent bookstore. We want to save all of them, cradle them in our arms, because the world needs books, lots and lots of books, books to hold, books to hug and kiss and cuddle like a binky.
Please tell us what your favorite independent bookstore is, and your last purchase. We urge you to go and spend your hard earned cash on books, books in independent bookstores. Keep them alive. They are an essential part of our reading culture.
Please.
Pretty please.
2 comments:
I grew up in New Tampa (where it could be argued that no culture exists) so I always had to commute to a place by USF called 'Just Books.' It was run by this old hippie who tacked all his Grateful Dead concert ticket stubs to a cork board up by the door. Last time I was there he told me that ever since Hunter Thompson offed himself *which had only happened a few weeks prior to this visit), he was selling rather well. The last book I purchased there that day was Orwell's 1984. It has since closed down.
In 2008 I visited a friend in Boulder Colorado. She had to work many of the days I visited, and she lived right by the little downtown area. I spent a lot of hours at the Beat Book Shop.I went a little crazy and bought something like ten or twelve books. The owner made me five CDs of Jack Kerouac performing his work and other people's work for free (because I told him I wasn't really into the whole 'beat' thing)! He is rad. It's a rad book store.
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