The Closing of Borders Books

What do you guys think?

I keep running the movie "You've Got Mail" through my head. One of my favorite movie's by-the-way, only this time it's "Fox Books" that's closing. Frankly, this whole thing is a bit scary for my taste. I'm an English Literature Major. I spent 5 years of my life, and a whole lot of college tuition devoted to these little bits of binded paper called books. So maybe I'm partial, but what does everyone think about this, or am I getting my knickers in a twist for no reason at all? Honestly, I don't know the exact reason why Borders is closing. Was it bad managing, too many locations? I have no idea, maybe I should have researched this before I went spouting off on this tyrant, hmmm? But I have this un-shakeable fear that some of the contributing factor was that the importance of literature is going down the tubes. (I feel as though I am climbing the stairs of the soap box, teetering, here I go, oh no, I'm up.....sorry)

What exactly is this development saying about our society? I realize that Borders is not the end all, say all, to books as we know them. In fact, how many Mom and Pop bookstores has a major conglomerate like Borders or Barnes and Noble or Wal-Mart for that matter, put out of business? Is this revenge? Will the Mom and Pop book store rise to live again, or is this a tragic commentary on a larger issue.

As a "Borders Club Member", yes, I've been known to frequent the many isles of Borders Books, complete with over-sugared espresso concoction in hand, wiping the plastic whip cream from my nose. I received the mass e-mail that Borders was, in fact, closing its doors for good. There was a brief synopsis of the reasons, but the reference to "electronic reading" really stuck with me.

As a blog writer, perhaps I'm stepping on my own toes, but I'm willing to chance it. Even now as I write this post the e-glow of the Blogger's screen stares back at me and casts it's ghostly blue light on my soul. Perhaps that blue light is the spirit of books soon to be no more. (Ooooo eeee ooooo) Ok maybe I'm being dramatic, but do you remember the encyclopedia? The dictionary? We tried to donate ours and both the library and Salvation Army wouldn't take them. I ended up keeping ours so I can show my children what I used to look up words in. They will probably laugh and gaze nostalgically at my "oldness" the way I did when my grandmother spoke of making butter. And now, as an electronic Hobby Farming/ Homesteading blog writer, who writes about making butter, it makes my life a strange sort of irony.


The written word is vanishing. Penmanship is a nostalgic thing of the past. I only write cursive in my 80 year old Aunt's Christmas card each year because I know she thinks it's "more proper". And when I'm done, I have to shake out the cramps of unused hand muscles. How sad! But as cursive has been replaced by printing, by the by, has been replaced by typing, has been replaced by electronic sending, such as e-mails, and now has created the acronym language of texts because we are so lazy or hurried as a society that we can't even take the time to spell out a whole word, LOL!!!



I can't imagine a world without the paper book. The smell of the pages, the typed text, anxiously fingering each page. There is a romanticism that occurs when you read a book, novel, letter etc. It is irreplaceable. I see stacks of books lined up on my book shelf as tiny adventures. Each binding a small treasure, an accomplishment, like the stamps on a passport, or pins on a map, (or maybe that's the hoarder in me. Maybe I'll start collecting Chihuahuas, or shot glasses, or clown figurines?)  

So what of Kindles or Nooks, what of Amazon.com vs. a real live bookstore, where you can actually touch the pages? Is this the new future of reading? Maybe we'll save the rain forests in the meantime? What do you guys think because I'm confused as all get!