From Grok Nation:
Movie World is a bookstore in downtown Burbank. Its interiors are lined with thousands of paperbacks, glorious oversized movie posters, and random ephemera, like Modern Mechanix back issues from the 1940’s with captivating cover art depicting “gee-whiz” gadgetry. There’s little rhyme or reason to each section, and if you dig around long enough, you will find something you never knew you always wanted. But after being around for fifty years, the shop is closing its doors forever.
. . . .
This isn’t the first bookshop in Los Angeles to recently close or announce closure. Just in January, the Barnes and Noble in Santa Monica quietly shut its doors for good. And the ever beloved Meltdown Comics on Sunset Boulevard, a haven for comic book fans and creatives for the past 25 years, sailed into the sunset on March 30th. In the past few years a plethora of book stores around LA and the Valley, too many to list, silently died.
This is alarming, since these institutions are special spaces, capable of enriching lives and igniting imaginations. Bookstores, libraries, and even comic book shops have served as places of entertainment, education and refuge.
Bookshops transformed my life. When I was in Kindergarten, I had a poor reading and comprehension level. My father wasn’t happy. And at night, he’d force me to stay up and read chapters out of my English text book until I passed out. In the third grade, I remember him getting so upset about bad marks that he tore up my comics. It wasn’t until I discovered R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps, (corny, I know) at the local Waldens, a now-defunct company, that I began to enjoy reading. Something clicked: I stopped seeing words, and saw actual images when I read. I began to imagine, because I picked up the right book. That changed everything.
In the fifth grade I was kicked out of the reading aid program after the teacher caught me tearing through a Michael Crichton novel. By freshman year of high school, I’d gotten my first “real” job at the local library as a shelver.
. . . .
Today, I’m a bibliophile; I’m obsessed with reading and collecting books. I have this odd habit: although I already have shelves full of books that I haven’t even opened, I keep buying more hardcover books. The Japanese have a term for this, “Tsundoku.” No, it does not translate to “hoarder.” According to Wikipedia, it means to acquire reading materials and letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them. I’m not sure why I keep buying. I think it has to do with never having an excuse to be bored, because I have more than I could ever possibly read. Or maybe, I just like having countless make-believe escape pods. Perhaps I keep loading up on books, because I’m paranoid about running out of places to find them.
Link to the rest at Grok Nation
The Oxford Dictionary defines Bibliophile as “A person who collects or has a great love of books.” dictionary.com’s defination is “a person who loves or collects books, especially as examples of fine or unusual printing, binding, or the like.”
Not me, I’m afraid. My love is of reading the content of the book, or even listening to that content in the case of the Audiobook. Surprisingly enough, I don’t think there is an English language word for this.
My dislike of this type of story is the unspoken implication that if there are not enough people to keep physical bookshops viable the rest of us should pay to do so, since they are so special and important. To me,they are just another business. I used to patronise them, now I don’t. Or in other words, I used to give them money in return for something I valued and wanted. Now they have nothing I want or value enough to pay for. And I don’t want to pay for these obsolete businesses to continue because people who love the books rather than the content think they are special.
Today, I’m a bibliophile; I’m obsessed with reading and collecting books. I have this odd habit: although I already have shelves full of books that I haven’t even opened, I keep buying more hardcover books.
“hoarder”…it means to acquire reading materials and letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them.
Think he’d be telling us about this if he was buying bicycles?
I’m sure the $15hr min wage hole had nothing to do with it.
/Sarcasm
Signature quote:
“There’s little rhyme or reason to each section, and if you dig around long enough, you will find something you never knew you always wanted.”
Some people enjoy blind scavenger hunts. Digging though piles until something catches their eye.
But most readers would rather find a worthy book as quickly and painlessly as possible.
I used to spend hours going through the shelves of a used book store like that. Stacks upon stacks of books in no particular order. Not by author, nor title, and often not even by genre. Scan a thousand books to maybe find a missing volume in a series. (Took me ten years to find the penultimate volume in the Family d’Alembert series.)
Then came Amazon and ABE books.
Enter title.
Click.
Enter payment and shipping info.
Click.
Wait a week or less.
Happy happy, joy joy.
Sorry scavengers, you might enjoy archaeological book discovery but I prefer less painful methods. And there’s more like me than like you.
There are none so blind as those that will not see …
If a ‘bookstore’ is a place you might find collections of stories, then they’ve been growing by leaps and bounds since that internet thingy showed up. Many were free, so more like a library, but some had a payment plan that got you registered and with a password you had access.
While Amazon is currently the largest here in the states, there are others and even still a lot of ‘libraries’ if you’re willing to do a little searching on the internet.
No doubt the OP would complain that the online bookstores aren’t as ‘good’ as their B&M ones, but I would have to point out that there were (and still are) many bookstores that were a waste of my time as they didn’t have what I was looking for. At least online I can just close the link when I leave without finding anything, without the glares from sales drones and security as I walk out of their store empty-handed.
And many of those online stores listed via ABE books or Amazon are B&M stores, too. They’re just better run.
Survival of the fittest.
This is alarming, since these institutions are special spaces, capable of enriching lives and igniting imaginations.
Too many consumers disagree for the stores to remain open.