Renée Rosen's Blog, page 5

Bookstore Revisited

So yesterday I was coming back from a meeting down on South Clark Street and came across a BAM (Books-A- Million) and seeing as every bookstore within walking distance of my home has closed, i had to stop in. After months of surfing virtual bookshelves on Amazon, B&N.com and Goodreads, here I was surrounded by shelves with physical books on them. And mind you, this wasn't a great bookstore, but by god, it was a store full of books.

The visit got me to thinking about a little bookstore that once sat on the opposite end of Clark Street in Lincoln Park appropriately called The Lincoln Park Bookstore. Now this is back in the 80s and they served no coffee, no designer cookies, just books and great books at that. I was in there nearly every day. I knew all the guys who worked there and they knew my tastes. If something came in that they knew I would like, they shoved it in my hands.

Later that night, I met up with my friends Tasha Alexander and Andrew Grant (both authors) and Javier (the coolest bookseller in Chicago--so cool that he can just go by the name Javier!) for dinner and drinks right around the corner from what was once The Lincoln Park Bookstore (now an Orange Cafe!) SNIFF, SNIFF. As we sat around the table discussing the future of books and bookselling, it made me sad to realize that there's a whole generation of YA readers who have never experienced a true bookstore. What a shame...