The Borders bookstore in Cary, North Carolina is one of those scheduled to close because its parent company declared bankruptcy. I'm going to miss that place. It had long served as the unofficial king of a sunken parking lot next to Buck Jones Road, across from one of Cary's busier freeway onramps. (that's my California showing -- they don't call them "freeways" in the South).
Like other stores of its kind, this Borders location welcomed browsers, chess players, laptop computer users, and anyone who wanted gourmet coffee to sip on while hunting down the latest fiction.
"Local interest" shelves were packed with the latest work from more than a dozen authors who call North Carolina home. Oddly enough, my favorite part of the store is the way its windows twinkled like fire in the orange and red rays of the setting sun.
I remember going there with the kids on Sunday afternoons to play games with people interested in investing in Triangle real estate. We'd usually play Robert "Rich Dad" Kiyosaki's "Cashflow" game and talk about the market-- Homes that were selling with multiple offers and those that just sat because no one took the time to stage and declutter them or showcase with professional photography. It still amazes me how many sellers and brokers don't understand that over 95% of the buyers today find their homes on the Internet and quickly pass on any home whose first picture isn't absolutely perfect. This drives my family crazy because even my kids know that net cash is so much higher when a home looks like a dream home, and it sells faster with less stress.
I digress. It's the Realtor in me. I can't stop thinking about homes, or viewing them, especially the Cary homes that back to lakes or have trail access. That's another one of my favorite weekend pastimes: Gathering a group of friends to ride bikes from Bond Park to as far as we can go.
Fortunately for book lovers in or moving to this area, Cary also has a Barnes and Noble bookstore comfortably situated near a baby-blue water tower that seems to get an annual paint job in celebration of the senior class at Cary High School.
When my husband and I first moved to Cary, our children were still in elementary school, and I would sometimes embarrass them by looking up at the water tower and asking if it really was the holding pen for that year's senior class. These days, the O'Hannigan children are well into middle school, and the old joke doesn't make them laugh. But they do smile at the bookstore in the shadow of the water tower. My daughter discovered the "Twilight" books there, and my son found a collection of manga-style adventures that rivals the surprisingly good collections of manga in bigger area libraries like the Eva Perry Library in Apex and the West Regional Library in Morrisville.
Libraries in the Triangle tend to be well-stocked with everything except music. Beyond that and the chain bookstores already mentioned, there are also a number of independent bookstores, especially in Raleigh, where mom-and-pop shops like Quail Ridge Books host poetry readings and other community events. There is nothing like a perfect cappuccino, a good book and a comfy seat to while away those precious few hours that I have away from my job. It refreshes me. The experience that bookstores offer is memorable in all the right ways.
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