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 | 2018-03-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Guardian | 2018-03-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-03-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Folio Magazine | 2018-03-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-03-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Guardian | 2018-03-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-03-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-03-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-03-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2018-03-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Bookseller | 2018-03-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Digiday | 2018-03-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ The Guardian | 2018-02-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2018-02-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2018-02-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-02-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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[ Los Angeles Times | 2018-02-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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