Hate to see Borders go. Back in the day, when I worked for a book publisher, our CEO envisioned news like this. It was a little hard to imagine because in the early to mid 90s, the race to build bigger better bookstores was fast and furious. We had to gear a lot of efforts towards things that would be pleasing to Borders, Brentanos, Waldenbooks and Barnes and Noble.
Less places for actual books is like neighborhood record stores going away, the material is still out there, but it is kind of sad to see it come to that. Given expense, my awareness of my neighborhood library has returned, because I guess I’m old school, something about the experience of having actual pages to turn.
I don’t have any issues with Kindles or Nooks. A colleague even successfully stripped a nook of its software and replaced it with Android software and it runs like a champ.
One of the greater parenting cons of all time was my dad suckering my siblings and me when we were kids. We would hit a branch library pretty regularly, but special occasions meant “DOWNTOWN!” Hidden treasures could be found on various shelves that rarely met the racks in Clarence. I know you can arrange that now, but when you’re a kid, finding something cool on your own is a joy that can’t be adequately described here.
That was the cool thing about the big stores like Borders. Sure, Amazon has everything under the sun and then some, but places like Borders would have something right there. I wasn’t there a lot, but appreciated what their efforts. It was never terribly important that “Seattle’s best” was brewing in the corner, but after getting my son all hyped up to help me find the latest Tom Robbins book, to the point of chanting “B is for Beer” as we entered the store and finding it was pretty cool.
One less venue for that, so that is a little sad.
Mike's Pub 