Closing The Borders

               My wife is fond of saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!”  I, on the other hand, abhor shopping.

               If I’m ever convicted of a serious crime and the judge wants to inflict cruel and inhuman punishment upon me, he or she will sentence me to ten years of hard shopping at a suburban mall.

               But there is one place where I love to shop.  Bookstores.  Whenever my wife and daughter drag me to a suburban mall or shopping center, I just find a bookstore (preferably one with a coffee bar), get myself a nice cup of java, and spend hours browsing in the book stacks.  I prefer small dusty bookstores, where the books are just stacked up in random fashion, as if they were in the library of a retired English teacher.  But I even like the “big box” bookstores, such as Barnes and Noble or Borders or Books R Us.

              But sadly, bookstores are going the way of the dinosaur and liberal Republicans.

              This past Monday, Borders Booksellers announced that it will soon be closing all of its 399 stores across America.  Sadly, Borders should now be renamed Bed, Bankruptcy and Beyond, as it is now asking the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York to allow it to be sold to liquidators, close all of its stores, and go completely out of business by the upcoming football season.

             Mega bookseller Barnes & Noble is still alive, but only because it has found a nook in the bookselling industry.  And when I say nook, I mean Nook.  Nook is the Barnes and Noble e-reader.  Like Amazon’s Kindle, it gives readers e-access to over 2 million books, magazines and newspapers.  If you have either a Nook or Kindle, you can download War and Peace in a matter of seconds, although it will still take you twenty years to read it.  And thanks to Amazon.com, a book lover can now have their very own virtual bookstore right in the palm of their hand.

             And there’s no longer a reason to go to the library.  Marion the Librarian will soon be out of work, as the entire Library of Congress is now available on your i-phone.  You don’t even need the Dewey Decimal System to find a book.  Just type The Sun Also Rises on your literary search engine, enter your credit card information, and you’ll have instant access to the write stuff.

               It was bound to happen.  You can’t have a bookstore without books, and now that the Gutenberg Printing Press has been replaced by Al Gore’s marvelous invention, the internet, there will still be words, but they will not be printed on paper.

               I will miss those quiet Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons, browsing through a suburban bookstore while my wife and daughter are engaging in deficit spending at Macy’s or Victoria’s Secret Panties Factory Outlet.

               I will miss getting sneak previews of the next best sellers sitting out on a bookstore display table or finding an oldie but a goodie in a stack of used books at the back of the store.

               I will miss curling up on the floor, leaning against a bookcase, and stealing as much of a free read as I can before a store clerk asks me, “May I help you, sir?”

               I will miss book-signings and the chance to meet a real live author.

               I will even miss standing in the check-out line at the bookstore, clutching the literature I have purchased as birthday or Christmas gifts or for my own reading pleasure.  I am generally an impatient man, but I actually enjoy standing in the check-out line at a bookstore.  I often engage in wonderful conversations with complete strangers, inquiring about what books they are purchasing and why they wish to read them.

               You don’t have that experience when you are downloading Justin Bieber’s autobiography on your i-phone.

               So while there is still time, I am headed to the nearest bookstore.

               You can join my wife and daughter at the Nordstroms or Urban City Slickers Outfitters next door.  Take your time.  I’m in no rush.  I will be at the bookstore until it closes.