Here is a piece by Ed Champion, which includes a list of indie bookstore near each closing Borders store. Thanks for the footwork, Ed. Let's all do the right thing and buy a book from these stores pronto.Robin Watson just reminded Detroit folks that there is a indie in Taylor called BOOK NOOK and there is a terrific bookstore near me SECOND STORY BOOKS (used by terrific). Also New Horizons Bookstore in Roseville, MI. And they do offer discounts. These are the stores we let wither when the big boxes came along. Now it's their turn to reclaim the spotlight.
Let's work on building up a list and building up some businesses.
The original Borders Bookstore was an entirely different affair from the pumped-up Thanksgiving turkey it became. It occupied a sizable chunk of a block in Ann Arbor and was magical because it was ALL ABOUT BOOKS.
It was the only store at that time where you were likely to find a book from a university press, for instance. Or books in foreign languages. Or books written ten years earlier.
There was no coffee shop, gifts area, music. Just books. Making the hour trek there was a joy I will never recapture. It was always packed with people holding books in their hands. After a while it added another store closer to us but far less magical.
And then it started adding stores everywhere and its magic continued to dim.
But it was still a Michigan thing. We still found a difference between it and other big box stores even if no one else did.
I wonder after Megan's book talk at a Borders on Wednesday if I will ever step inside one again. I doubt it and I am so sorry for that. I have read a lot of press about all the mistakes Borders made and wonder if sticking to that one store that carried books no one else did was the way to go. Probably not, because everything has changed since then.
Maybe one day, I will go to Ann Arbor and find such a bookstore again. It might not be Borders but it may some new and wondrous store that takes a chance on a fickle public.
Along this line, check out Megan's blog today with emails readera shared with her about what their childhood library experience meant to them. Are we willing to allow the institutions that meant the most to us be gone for our children and grandchildren? There are people that say government should not fund libraries. Or much of anything else. Don't let that happen.
12 comments:
I miss the bookstore experience. We used to have a Waldenbooks in the mall and I worked part time there for about a year. Not because I needed the money, but to be around books.
It was gone a couple of years before things started going downhill so fast.
There are no other bookstores in town, not even used ones. Borders and Barnes and Noble had stores in the next large city over, about a forty-five mile drive. I knew a few used places as well there. It was an all day trip when I made it.
But my health makes such a drive impossible these days. I do it all online. Much more convenient.
The thing I miss the most is browsing in bookstores and finding that book you didn't even know you wanted until you came across it. You can't get that online. Only things you know about.
That's why I like, and love to participate, in your Forgotten Books. I've found a number of fine books I'd never heard of and a wealth of others I wish I could get. Get afford or read everything.
Though Lord knows I try.
It is very sad to watch the institutions that enriched our lives disappear one after the other.
We have been taught to value things the next generation has not.
I didn't know that was how Borders got its start, but there's a cautionary tale there. This is an oversimplification and I'm sure an MBA would be happy to pick it apart, but screw him. It's probably MBAs put Borders in this situation in the first place.
Borders used to BE something: a bookstore. They made money by handselling books. It morphed into something that was there to make money, however, and eventually diluted its brand so much the people who made it what it was no longer could find service there.
I used to get Borders gift cards for my credit card rewards. I stopped a couple of years ago because I could rarely find anything I wanted to read. It was Top 40s or nothing.
I'm sorry for the people who have lost their jobs, and I miss the Border I used to shop at. I'll not miss what it had become.
I'm amazed our two BORDERS stores are still open. With the company in bankruptcy, I fear the entire 400 BORDERS still open will close in the near term. Like you, I found BORDERS stocked with wonderful books. Their zany coupons saved me thousands of dollars over the years. Once these stores fold, we won't see their like again.
A couple of years ago, our community held an election to decide on whether to increase the millage for the local library system. It would have amounted to about a $4 per year increase in property taxes per homeowner. The measure was trounced 79% to 21%. My husband and I were baffled. Having things like good libraries provides a quality of life that maintains solid home prices, but that seemed completely lost on most of our fellow voters (including one neighbor we met at the polling place--he writes a column for the local paper and I figured he'd be all for supporting the library--who said, "We've got to vote down this tax increase"). I wasn't quite so shocked the following year when the vote to increase the millage for fire fighters also went down to defeat.
As I always say, nobody likes taxes, but, ya know, they pay for stuff.
I think Dana nailed it pretty well. I'm not going to miss Borders, because by the end it had become something horrible: a homogenized, bland place catering to nothing but popular taste (or lack thereof). I honestly can't remember the last time I went in a Borders and actually found something I'd been looking for. As far as mourning something that it used to be, well... that loss happened a looong time ago.
The few Borders we've gone to in recent years have been awful - uncaring, unfriendly, unhelpful staff who knew little and cared less.
George, they will all be closing by September according to the piece I read yesterday. Another 10,000+ employees looking for jobs that no long exist.
Jeff M.
The justification for not wanting the government to support libraries, etc.? Why should they pay for what someone else uses ... a.k.a. flying a flag of ignorance with pride. Why have people enrich their lives when they can stay at home and prepare for the apocalypse? I’m not kidding, some of these lunatics are actually storing goods for the day of reckoning. Others simply can’t understand why anybody would go to a library when they have a bible to read over and over and over again. And then there are the skinflints who see kids learning things in libraries that can’t be censored enough to keep out books they feel should be burned.
It used to be a good country, America
Makes me kind of miss that rapture thing ...
Of course growing up in Ann Arbor I spent many many hours in the original location.. I mostly recall my Dad taking us there in Saturdays to get us out of the house after my mother had worked the night shift. It was around the time that I left Ann Arbor for college that Borders seemed to explode and reach out and add so much junk to their shelves... everything moves towards it's end... I will see you on Wed, which might be my last stop at a Borders as well...
Yes, Eric, my husband just went over there and they are still prepared to do this--it might be their last event.
I hope King's Books is hanging in there, the little one in Ferndale and the main one downtown Detroit.
Micro-bookstores will hold on as gathering spaces in tandem with coffee and or booze, I suspect. If not, I'll open one myself !
That's cool. I heard about the Borders going out of business today but this is a great idea to point up the other bookstores, the indies, near them.
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