Remember Bookstores?

Washington, DC's historic Union Station

I read yesterday that another bookstore -- Barnes & Noble in Union Station -- is biting the dust and it's just incredible to me that a bookstore, in the nation's capitol, in a train station, where you can buy a wide variety of things to read, is closing.

 

I posted about this wonderful book store in December 2011 (Books @ Union Station December 8, 2011) and find it sad that it will soon be closed.  Do people not read books anymore?  I find that hard to believe.  Whenever I'm on Metro people are reading and books are everwhere at the beach. 

 

Maybe Kindles and a rocky economy are the cause.  A Barnes & Noble spokesman told The Washington Post that the company had to leave because of redevelopment around Union Station.  That's another bad idea but I won't even get into that project.  Barnes & Noble was offered a new location but decided instead to close its Union Station store.

 

I'm sure I am showing my age by saying this stuff but I can't help it.

 

I love bookstores.  Books allow your imagination to run wild and escape to other worlds and learn about new things.  Books help you feel you are part of the larger human community and help you heal and become resilient.  You read about others who have experienced the same thing you have and feel less isolated.  Plus, remember that most movies were inspired by a book. 

Buying books online from Amazon just doesn't do it for me.  If I happen to know exactly what book I want, then it's different.  But I can't go on Amazon's website and pick up the book, twirl through the pages, hold it and read random parts of the book so I can decide if I'm going to buy it or not.  Or ask the Amazon website if it has read the book, and if so, what does it think of it?  Hey Amazon, what did you think of this book?  Is is worth reading?

 

I can see myself as an elderly person (which of course is way off in the distant future) with a young child on my lap trying to explain to them what a book store was:

"Really?  You mean there used to be stores and all they had inside were books?"

"Yes, dear, and you could browse among all the books and look at the new titles and the books on sale and sometimes, just by chance, you would find a wonderful book that you never heard of because you spent time reading the covers and talking to other readers."

"Oh, but it sounds like a lot of wasted paper! Think of the trees!"

I used to spend my lunch hour at the Borders bookstore at 18th and L Streets but that closed last year after declaring bankruptcy.   Now there are only two bookstores close to my office: the Barnes & Noble on 12th Street and the independent bookstore, Kramer's, located  at DuPont Circle.

Books @ Union Station

I was downtown at Union Station the other day and was surprised to see that Barnes & Noble is still open.  Now that Borders has closed and the Barnes & Noble store in Georgetown has been bought by Nike, I am always happy to see a book store open and bustling with customers. 

It's such a luxury to browse in a book store.  To go from table to table and shelf to shelf, to look at the covers of the books, pick them up, read through them and just feel the weight of the book in your hands is to get lost in your imagination.  I find books to be comforting when they reveal new information to me, when I can escape in them and when they help me understand something that I have been trying to wrap my brain around.

Amazon is very convenient but it's just not the same.  When you're hanging out in a book store you see books you've already read and enjoyed and you also think about how much work went into writing them; at least I do.  Others may  think that books are work and not pleasure but I think that means they just aren't reading the right books.  Let's be honest, then there are some books that in a million years I can't figure out how they got published.  But that's a different story.

I'm afraid the book store as a store will no longer exist in a few years and that will be very sad.  As a place to sell books, Union Station is the perfect location for a bookstore because people are hopping onto trains everywhere and it is also a Metro stop.  Even though the chains don't seem to be staying afloat in this economy, there are two independent bookstores in my area, Politics & Prose and Kramer Books, and they seem to be doing very well.  I'm crossing my fingers that it stays that way.

I used to think that if you saw a store with people inside buying merchandise that it was a good sign.  I no longer think that because it doesn't really mean anything other than there are people in the store while you are looking at it.  The corporate offices of the stores you are in could be literally selling the store out, merging with another store or simply making really bad financial decisions.

When in doubt of what to buy someone, always buy a book!