I have to go to the metaphysical bookstore today. It's urgent. No I don't have any premonition of eminent death, but I need to find a book for my next study group, and the Buddhist bookstore is defunct, and lots of my friends (the independent bookstores) have closed their eyes. Borders and Barnes are not deeply concerned with spirituality, unless it is a cult member renouncing his past or ten ways to become compassionate in ten minutes. Yes, I will probably have to order the book, but first I will try my dusty, dark and dingy local place. I am so old I actually like to linger over tables of books, and read the backflaps and listen to recommendations from the owners. I like to BE IN bookstores. As a child and young person, I lived in places where there were no bookstores and no libraries except for the school's, and it is not a pretty picture. I lived for two years in another country where there were zero bookstores, and the one library was stuffed with British colonial glorifications and a few gems. That was when I read the complete works of Dickens and Henry James as well as, I'm afraid, Ian Fleming and Nevil Shute.
So I consider bookstores like art museums. And by the way, I never miss the bookstore in an art museum. Wouldn't think of it. Luckily, a couple of our local indies are doing quite well, and I try to buy all the books I can at those places. But my kids wouldn't. And their kids will be reading kindles. So a bookstore tells me I am old, and it's up to me to treasure such a dying artifactal tomb. I love the old, out of print tables and the sections where I am in the dark about what to seek, and just have to feel the book to see if it's telling me anything.
I have a great bookstore seven houses from me, a mystery/scifi/fantasy place where you can barely squeeze in the front door, and books litter the floor, and the narrow isle with side pockets keeps going back and back and back. I half expect to see a black shrouded figure slipping behind a shelf. At the end there is a stairs to the loft, stuffed with more epistles and a delightful selection of children's books. I've been known to go in and forget to come out. I have my authors I seek, but love most the front section, where new paperbacks and some hardbacks are easily perused without stumbling, and I can risk it all to try a new author. And on a weeknight once a month, you can come to a mystery reading group and have complete strangers recommend something you'd never otherwise know about. Yes, some of the chains have book groups, but they are reading what the publishers have placed in the store, not what is glorious and strange and magical. Yes, eventually Murakami became mainstream, but not Natalie Nocomb. So much will be lost. Or maybe not. I sound gruzzly.
Next time you're in an independent bookstore, notice us geezers, we are legion, and we don't want our sanctuaries exterminated.
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