Quotable - Requiem for the Bookstore

"Bookstores have always mattered to me. I love visiting them, no matter the city or neighborhood. I love to see folks browse, check out the stacks, crack open something new and good…or old and good, for that matter. It’s a social thing for me, the way a sports bar makes a frat boy feel at home, or a botanical garden inspires an orchid enthusiast. I am nourished among titles and ink and the sorts of folks who show up to worship books in their shrines. ...

Maybe it’s inevitable that Americans sucked more and more into seclusion by so many factors—air conditioning, the Internet, dangerous neighborhoods, Dancing With The Stars, obesity, ageing, other excuses—will simply reach for a mouse instead of leaving a house.

Still, it somehow feels to me like a sign of failing culture to see a bookstore with boarded windows. No matter how many books can dance on the head of a Kindle or a Nook, a bookstore offers more—a social and cultural experience, a bond, a brother/sisterhood. A point of light."

~ Charles McNair, The Booky Man: Requiem for the Book Store