For my entire life, there’s been a bookstore on my local Main Street. It was called Book Nook. And, being who I am and doing what I do, I loved that place.
It had old-fashioned wood-paneled walls. Shelves that smelled more like an old library than a shop. As a child, my favorite part of the store was the spinning rack of bookmarks.
Did anyone else have this weird bookmark obsession as a child? Fancy bookmarks were everything I wanted in this world. These days I just use any nearby scrap of paper. That’s a little sad.
Man, that place never changed. I used to beg my mom to take me there anytime we were on Main Street. At the time, Main Street was a place we were a lot. She worked at several different restaurants over the years. We lived in three different apartments tucked above stores. There was a little five and dime where I marveled at the fancy pens that looked like crystal. We ate at Burger Hut and the Hot Dog Shoppe. We used to have Woolworths until it burned down when I was a child, but I remember sitting at the counter and having milkshakes.
I remember the fire, too. The way the smoke coughed upwards in the sky and terrified me. I worried that it would come for us as well. I think I’m still a little afraid of that.
The five and dime is gone. The Woolworths is gone. Any number of other little shops are gone. The Unicorn Gift Shop, several antique stores whose names I’ve forgotten, a frozen yogurt place. There used to be a classy little bar where I watched presidential debates during the first Obama campaign, drinking Long Island ice teas with the campaign director in my town. Now it’s the classy little wine bar where I go to enjoy a glass of chocolate-flavored wine and read. Life moves on, tearing itself down, burning itself out, building new days and lives and stores upon the memories and ashes.
But not Book Nook. Man, that place never changes.
As a kid, I went there to buy Goosebumps and Babysitters Club books, series I loved equally. As a young woman, I waited outside the door for them to open the day the last Harry Potter book came out. The storekeeper there that morning was both confused and, I think, annoyed to have some overly excited woman in her early twenties waiting at her door. Apparently, this was a new experience for her.
I had my first book signing there when Broken Patterns came out. A copy of the book sat in the front window for months. They even hung up a poster from Starting Chains.
For months. To the point that it faded.
That place never changed.
That was a great experience. A young mom came in, clearly with just barely enough money to get her daughter a book. I gave her a copy of mine and she was thrilled.
I hope she’s doing alright.
I’d pop in from time to time. Sometimes I’d find great things. The author’s extended version of The Stand and American Gods. I impulsively bought some hardcover books that I still love to this day. Strange The Dreamer and An Absolutely Remarkable Thing.
But I didn’t get the sequel to either book there. They never seemed to get them in.
As other stores came and went, Book Nook stayed. Its new releases dwindled. Its stationary options did too, until they went away entirely. So did the bookmarks.
There were no cute impulse buys at the counter. The same counter with the same register that had always been there. Instead, there was a display of lottery tickets. And they clearly made money from the lottery tickets. Once during a book signing, I watched an elderly woman come in and proceed to purchase a scratch-off ticket. She scratched it with no joy, then bought another and another. She kept going for quite some time, scratching tickets with absolutely no emotion on her face.
It became a place that wasn’t fun to be in. Where I rarely if ever found new books I was interested in reading. The hours were erratic, so even if there was something there I wanted, I had a hard time coming in.
And it never changed.
Earlier this year, I received an email from the manager, telling me they were going to close and that I needed to come pick up my books.
Losing my local bookstore has left me with mixed emotions. They survived so much, hanging on through decades of Amazon encroachment and even the pandemic. But they never, ever changed. They never grew with the times. They did nothing to offer readers and buyers a better experience. They simply existed.
And now, they don’t.
I do not blame the store entirely. But neither do I blame competition entirely. Neither do I blame consumers entirely. But all three share a bit of the blame.
Myself included.
I could have been more patient and asked them to order the books I wanted. I could have scheduled more events there, even though the reason I stopped was that no one showed up to them.
But in the end, the issue lies with all three. We should shop small when we can. Big corporations should stop using such predatory practices. They won’t, but they should. And small businesses should put in the effort to grow and change with the times.
In the end, though, I don’t write this to blame anyone. I write this to mourn. No matter the reasons, my local bookstore is closing. The store I shopped in as a child is gone. And I hate that. So I just wanted to hold space for it today.
I don’t remember who said this, or even where I first heard it. But someone somewhere said that every piece of writing is a love letter or a eulogy. This was both.
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