Should We Fight to Save Independent Bookstores?

Yes.

From an article in the New Yorker...

I was explaining all this over e-mail to a colleague, who replied, “I know bookstores are supposed to be good things, but we don’t have video stores anymore, and maybe we need to get used to the new order instead of lamenting the old.” This is what I’d say to his point: it totally sucks that there’s no more video stores. I spent long nights hanging out at Kim’s in college, deliberating for hours over which random German film from the nineteen-seventies to take home with me. I actually watched stuff like that all the way through then, maybe since I’d spent so much time and energy looking for it. I even miss Blockbuster: when I was a kid, the Friday-night trip to the video store to pick out a movie was the most exciting event of the week. How I watch a video now is: I browse on Netflix for a while, start watching something, get about five minutes in, wonder if I’ve made the right decision, and start the process over. It’s ridiculous, and yet I can’t…stop…clicking…

My point is that I wish we had been able to save the video store. I know the young citizens of the new order don’t miss it, but kids don’t miss anything: they’re kids. And since we haven’t entirely killed the bookstore yet, I would like us not to. Going into bookstores to browse, to attend readings, to interact with the staff, to see the selection they’ve curated—all these things excite me and entice me to read. If my book-buying experience becomes simply me sitting alone on the couch click, click, clicking, I don’t know what I’ll become (I’ll probably forget I’m looking for books and jump over to Netflix).