Book Stores Closing

A friend and I went on an excursion to a big box book store the other day; she to buy books and I to do fieldwork for a client. On our way out and through the parking lot, I admitted that I used to harbor the desire to open a book store "with comfortable chairs and couches, wooden shelves, live plants and cats--like the ones we used to know all over the country." She murmured assent. "They're almost all gone," I added, thinking of the piece I'd read about Murder Ink in New York closing (Murder Ink Closes requires registration and costs) and another in the Pacific northwest.

"We should go to La Mesa," I said, explaining that I think at least three independents still operate there: children's, cookbooks, and used books stores. Neither of us buys children's books, needs more cookbooks, and she buys only new editions and I seldom buy at all. "I want to see the stores before they're all gone," I continued, "like the wonderful old Carnegie libraries," thinking of the newest branch that recently opened in our area of San Diego. From the street it looks like a heap of architectural building blocks thrown down. I'm sure it's amazing inside, and terribly functional, but I miss the old shadow-filled, whispering, drafty, chilling concrete mausoleums of my childhood. Cozy stores and spooky libraries mean books to me.

[books]