On the ride home from VA, we (my sandz and a soror) decided to stop at a Prime Outlet mall. They wanted to shop and I just wanted to observe as I am on strict shopping probation. Unfortunately, no more than 3 minutes out of the car, I spotted a sign that read 'Book Warehouse'(probation ended.) When I walked in, I found a store covered in signs reading "50% ALL FINAL SALES!!!!" After picking up a Supremes autobiography marked down to $3.99, I swiftly walked over to the Seth Green-lookalike hunkered behind the counter.
Me: "Excuse me. This book says it's $4. Is this the price after the discount?"
Clerk: "No, it's actually 50% off that price."
Me: "Sheesh, you guys are tryna make me carry a load of books back to Michigan!"
In response, he simply shrugged and said "Well my store is closing, so feel free to buy as much as you'd like. I need to get rid of it all anyway."
I spent nearly 30 minutes walking around the small shop, running my fingers along rows of best sellers, and standing on tip-toes to grab fiction novels on shelves out of reach. At one point, I just stopped and read the titles of the books on each shelf one by one. If I had fallen into a trance, it was quickly interrupted by a loud-mouth redhead who walked in with her boyfriend. I caught the end of her rant to her significant other who looked as if he wanted to slap a muzzle on his yapping girlfriend.
"....like hundreds of them are closing. You see 'for sale' signs, like, everywhere. And anyway, who cares. Just hurry up and grab something. I don't know why people publish books anymore anyway. Like, who has time to read?" Irritated and shocked with my fleeting thoughts about using a book as a bludgeoning weapon, I bought five books and rushed out the door. Reality hit during the long ride home. "She was right."
Bookstores around the country are closing at significantly high rates. After declaring bankruptcy, Borders has decided to close more than 30% of its stores nationwide. Barnes & Nobles, which once boasted stock worth $45 per share, fell to just $15 in 2010, and with the introduction of e-readers such as the Kindle, Amazon has noticed a dramatic increase in the sale of e-books. Brett Arends of The Wall Street Journal correctly labeled the happenings as "The Bookstore Massacre-" the closure of bookstores around the country and the slow extinction of the book.
I love technology, and a part of me longs to be a gadget geek. However, there's the other part that feels as if the world is moving too fast. I was the kid that read the newspaper every morning. I was the kid that preferred bookstores over toy stores. To picture them both extinct within the next decade seems like a distant nightmare. If this is how I feel, I can only imagine how my parents feel, or my grandparents would have felt. A line that resonates and perfectly illustrates my thoughts at this moment was quoted by the beloved Brooks Hatlen character in The Shawshank Redemption: "The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry."
You damn right Brooksy.
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