Big-Box Bookstores Don’t Have to Die

You could say I have a sentimental attachment to the chain bookstore. Growing up in an intellectually impoverished American suburb, I spent much of my free time in now-defunct locations of Borders and Barnes & Noble. I read garbage, mostly: popular history magazines, Star Trek novelizations, art tomes whose pages I scoured only for frank depictions of naked women. But I had an intuitive sense that all those “wordy” books sleeping on the shelves, whose spines I raced my finger along while traveling between the café and the restrooms, would some day be the building blocks of a real, adult mind, the cathedral-like dimensions of which I could almost picture emerging through the haze of my juvenile enthusiasms. Inside Barnes & Noble, the figures of great literature literally looked down on me. A large wallpapered mural assembled them all in some grand ahistorical café. It was through that mural that I had my first encounters with the brooding fop Oscar Wilde and the fabulously bearded Anthony Trollope. Continue reading at 'Slate'

[ Slate | 2015-12-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-01-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-01-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Germany’s Bestselling Books of 2018: Crime, Politics, and Big Questions

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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2019-01-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Children’s author and illustrator John Burningham dies

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[ The Bookseller | 2019-01-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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John Burningham, children's author and illustrator, dies aged 82

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[ The Guardian | 2019-01-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Industry Stocks Took a Big Hit in 2018

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Tokyo’s New Bunkitsu Bookstore: Designed With an Admission Fee

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Judy Turner, who wrote as Katie Flynn and Judith Saxton, dies aged 82

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[ Fast Company | 2019-01-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2019-01-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Seven big literary world stories from 2018

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[ Los Angeles Times | 2018-12-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Critic Eileen Battersby dies following car crash

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[ The Bookseller | 2018-12-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-12-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Industry Notes: Norway’s ‘Bookstore Award,’ the UK’s SpecSavers Winners

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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2018-11-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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