Spending Wisely

I really miss video stores. I miss deciding I'm in the mood to watch a certain film and stopping by the local Blockbuster on my way home from work to pick up the DVD (or, to date myself, the VHS tape). Remember when a fun date night used to include a trip to the video store? You could roam the isles together, debating which film you were both in the mood to watch, and veg out on the couch that evening, bowl of popcorn in hand. These days, that experience is all but gone. Sometimes I wonder, if later on down the road, when all the dust of Netflicks and On Demand has settled, if there will be a revival of video stores. I can't imagine that we will ever see the large chains of video stores like Blockbuster again. But maybe, if we're lucky, we'll get one small, independent store plopped into a neighborhood, one that survives because it's the only one around and can cater to the people who are looking for the exact type of experiences I described above. I would like that. Very much.

A few weeks ago I read an article in The New York Times about author Ann Patchett opening a bookstore in Nashville. Armed with this knowledge, along with the optimism in an opinion piece she wrote that The Times had published in August, I got to thinking, once again, about the battle of books versus e-readers, about my constant rallying cry to save the bookstores.

Those people in favor of e-readers always love to tell me how much more they're reading now that "they just have all these books right at their fingertips!" Or they tell me "how much easier it is to travel with just one little machine instead of all those paperbacks I used to carry" and - my favorite - "just think of the positive environmental impact the e-reader is having!" Sweet Moses, people. It's not like actual books are radioactive poison. But I digress. I'm not really here to get into the hot debate of e-readers versus printed books.

What I have been thinking about though, is the fact that I hope and I pray that I am never writing about how much I miss bookstores, the way I am about videostores. I do not exaggerate in the least when I say that browsing in bookstores is one of my greatest loves and something I have enjoying doing all of my life. While I'm lucky to live in a city that currently has several well stocked and well staffed independent bookstores, I am well aware that this trend will not continue if they do not receive our support. And our money. Patchett has a great quote in The Times article about her new bookstore: “This is not a showroom, this is not where you come in to scan your barcode,” she said. “If you like this thing, it’s your responsibility to keep this thing alive.”

And that's just it. If having actual printed books doesn't matter to you, you can purchase that e-reader and the e-books that go along with it for all of the reasons that people love them. But real, tactile, printed books matter to me. Very much so. So I keep buying them. If bookstores don't matter to you, then you can purchase your books online at places like Amazon.com.
However. If you cherish walking into an entire building filled with more books than you will ever be able to read in a lifetime, if you could wander the isles for hours, running your hands across the spines of various novels, pulling books on and off the shelves to look at cover art or to read the jacket, knowing you could potentially discover a new favorite book? a new love? You need to shop at bookstores.

I'll admit, I've made purchases through Amazon in the past. I have. They offer good prices and at times, free shipping. But in the past year or so, particularly with the death of Borders, I've been thinking more and more about the need to save our bookstores. This is my little cause, my soapbox, one I -clearly - feel strongly about. Recently I made the decision that whenever possible, I would purchase books in person, at a real live bookstore instead of online. I have several books on my Christmas shopping list and I'm working diligently to buy them around the city rather than order them at the computer. Yes, it can be a pain in the neck, treking around after work on the hunt for a particular book. Yes, I realize there are times when I will be paying more than I would online. Bookstores are that important to me. I'd much rather spend the extra time and the extra $3 or $4 and do my part to keep those stores in business than save a little bit now and later bemoan the lack of one of the things I cherish the most. It is my - our, if you love bookstores as much as I do - responsibilty.