My neighborhood Borders Books is closing its doors for forever this week. Usually I am not sad about a corporation going out of business but Borders has a special place in my heart and here is why…
Growing up going to the bookstore was an event whether is shopping for books on the summer reading list for school, meeting friends to study or just hang out or just spending quite moments engrossed in the latest novel or exploring a new country or city by reading a book. Over the last 25 years of my life, the bookstores’ names may have changed but the events have not from meeting friends at the bookstore not to study but now for a book club meeting or to grab a cup of coffee.
Bookstores, in my opinion, are also provided a community service from story time for families with small children; the café filled with college student finishing up that last minute term paper, entrepreneurs writing their business plan for the next big thing or young and older couples going out on their first or 100th date. Whenever I would go into my local Borders I also felt a since of belonging and connecting with my community.
I especially would love going to my local Borders at Christmas time. The whole store would be humming with holiday music playing throughout the store and the bustling with last minute shoppers getting gifts for out of town family or stocking stuffers. Every year I would look forward to gifts from my dad who always without fail would send us kids a box of books. I received books written by Malcolm Gladwell, the Dalai Lama, Dr. Phil, Oprah as well biographies and many more. He always would inscribe in the book “Read and Heed” Love, Dad.
I keep thinking back to the movie “You Got Mail” when Meg Ryan’s character Kathleen Kelly’s store closed down after 30+ years because of another mega bookstore owned by Joe Fox played by Tom Hanks moved in across the street. It’s ironic that now the mega bookstores are being shut down by the internet stores (Amazon). I know Border’s made poor business decisions and was way behind the eight ball on the e-book but I look at this closing with some sadness as an end of one chapter in my life and now I am forced to move on to the next one.
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