Real Books

You know, made out of paper!

My whole life, I’ve loved bookstores.

New and used, it never mattered to me, but perhaps I had the most affinity for the latter.

Photo by Rudy Issa on Unsplash

I must though, sadly admit that my love of bookstores has faded a great deal in recent years. Over the past fifteen or twenty years my love has diminished, and honestly, it’s at least partially my own fault.

Over that time, most bookstores seem to have closed. Indeed there is no new bookstore in my city, nor in the next city. The closest one to me is over thirty miles away. We do have a couple of used bookstores left, but in some ways they aren’t what they once were.

I was never a Kindle man. Monopoly concerns me, and I think, when I look at Amazon today, my concerns have been amply justified. But, about fifteen years ago, I did buy the Barnes and Noble version of an e-reader, their Nook. It was, frankly, a really beautiful and elegant device.

But, it helped to do its part to kill the thing I loved, bookstores.

I read books on it for some time, and I read books on my phone. But, to my mind, doing so was never the same as reading actual books. I don’t know what it is about paper and ink, but I love reading physical books. Because of the difference in experience, I haven’t read an e-book in a very long time.

I do, in fairness, need to say that I spend hours a day reading news and commentary and speculation online. And that leaves me satisfied. But books, nah, books need to be, for me, something I can hold in my hand and look at on a shelf.

But where to buy them?

Amazon? Not if I can help it, given what I’ve written above. Elsewhere online? My preferred choice, but it is not enjoyable as is a bookstore.

The Barnes and Noble thirty some miles from my house? It went meh long ago, as brick and mortar book buyers dried up.

But, I’ve been reading, recently, about a resurgence of real books. Real books as a fashion statement. Reading as status.

I do hate to see books become a status symbol, but hey, whatever gets them back out into the real world has to be a good thing.

So, shortly after Thanksgiving I visited that Barnes and Noble for the first time in a really long time. Let me tell you, that place was packed with people! And stacked with massive inventory of beautiful books. I bought everyone on my Christmas shopping list a book or two.

The store was full, it was exciting! It was no longer meh!

That was something I hadn’t seen in many years. Something that gave me hope that maybe brick and mortar book retailing can become profitable again. Hope that maybe someday I’ll be able to buy a new book in my own city once again.

The whole experience went so far as to encompass reading related merch. I’ve read, when reading about this resurgence of reading, about the people carrying The New Yorker tote bags as a status symbol.

Well, I couldn’t help but notice Barnes and Noble getting into that game as well. I’m rather a bag snob, and let me tell you, they had some really good looking, extremely high quality tote bags in there. One even came home with me. Illustrating perhaps that people are once again willing to pay money for books and their reading experience.

I returned to the store just a couple of days before Christmas. The experience was the same; happy shoppers packing the store. Voting with their dollars. If we think about it, we can understand that capitalism really is a form of direct democracy.

Over the years I’d largely given up hope that we would see vibrant bookstores ever again. But I think I was wrong, and I have hope once again.

And that is a trend that I think bodies well for our society.

---

In other news, our Alkemye Book Club seems to be off to a great start with Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.

In January we are going to tackle Frankenstein!

By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

I chose this book because despite being published in 1818, I think that it speaks to our current zeitgeist.

It was written in a time when new technologies were strongly impacting society. Workers were displaced, scientific progress seemed unchecked by morality, and there was a growing opposition to the widespread changes being wrought by technological innovation.

This is quite similar to today, particularly with the advent of artificial intelligence, and a widespread view that the creators of this new technology are driven only by a desire to implement it, and greed, not caring about what or whom they break in the process.

Frankenstein was a warning, relevant to today.

I've read a good deal about the book through the years, but have never actually read the book itself, so I look forward to diving into it.

I hope that you'll join me in reading and discussing it in the new year.

Our Book Club meets right here in Substack Chat: