All the Bookstores We Loved Are Closed
The books are leaving indents on my arms and draining the blood from my fingers, growing paler the longer I stand on line. “Read My Mind’’ by the Killers plays softly in the distance. A smile grows across my face, a nice change from the U2 album they played in full, just ending before Brandon Flowers lights up the store with his voice. This is it, but it hasn’t settled in yet. There are too many books to be sold, too many people continuously walking through the door, too many more trips here I need to take.
On the line that stretched half of the store, curving around the new historical non-fiction, the women in front of me recounting how different the bookstore has looked, pointing at the picked-over shelves, the clearance racks on the second floor, and the infamous Children’s Corner. “You couldn’t even walk up there; there weren’t any books,” and “Yeah, I remember that.” They sway back and forth, shift the weight of the books in their arms, shuffle on the run-down linoleum floors, and shake their heads softly.
Murmurs of walking away with too many books, hushed tones speculating what’s going to come into the building, happen to the employees and the cafe lined with celebrity photos. When is it going to close? How soon do we have left? The store is the most packed I’ve seen it; purveyors know they can’t walk down the aisle without getting trapped by someone else who wants to pick over the shelves, the tables of book remainders, the soft graphic denoting $3 and $4 books with a 40% discount on top of it. Impossible to find exactly what you’re looking for; patrons spend hours searching last names and genres, picking up and putting down and picking back up again in the dance of decision.
It’s the end of Book Revue, the 44-year old mainstay bookstore right in the center of Huntington’s downtown, the welcoming signage outside beckoning booklovers and letting them know of the fate of the store. Thank You for 44 Wonderful Years!
A young granddaughter, begging her seated grandfather to hand her some money for the two books she clutched excitedly in her hands. “Please, these are my favorite authors! I would die for these authors!”
So the cycle continues, so the dance swings on.
Here, I chased my brothers down the aisles, danced in the children’s corner, lost hours to the shelves, never knowing what I was looking for or about whom or by whom. Sold stacks of used books for store credit and always left with a full heart and full arms, carrying the weight of the friends I would be meeting on the pages. A trip to the dentist or the diner in Huntington usually ended with a stop at Book Revue, losing my dad to the history section, then sports, then entertainment only to find him an hour late, met with a “Ready to go?” I wanted to say no, to melt into the floor or to chain myself to the wooden chairs sporadically placed around the store, or hide in the bathroom until the doors locked out front. Ready wasn’t a word I knew, not when there were more authors to greet, worlds to discover, loose money saved in the wallet to spend. But the show had to end, the museum always closes, the sun sets.
It would be easy to talk about the symbolism, the beckoning of the digital age, the shortening attention spans and, dispute the rise of BookTok and Bookstagram, the fact that the younger generations just don’t read if it wasn’t so sad, and if it wasn’t happening in this community. Bookstores stand as a pillar of the community, a portal to a different world, a mainstay on the main street — or in the case of Book Revue, right off of main street.
The digitization of books, the rise of the monopoly of the online book marketplace, the rising rent prices, the bubble of the real estate market. Overconsumption. Underliteracy. All of these themes feel like words, spoken and then evaporated in front of you. A bookstore is closing, and in a month, the building will be vacant, no more feet to trace dust across the floors, heavy with wooden shelving units and cardboard cutouts of presidents. An empty cafe, a silent room no longer illuminated by local authors and B-List celebrities on book tours, no longer filling the spaces with prose and poetry, photography and philosophy. Book Revue only follows the path of many bookstores before it, shuttering its doors for good. When I lived in Cambridge, I walked past the now-closed Rodney’s Bookstore on Massachusetts Avenue, unexpectedly leaving with six paperbacks that I didn’t have the time or the space for, disappearing into the romance corners to share secrets and whispers, the memoir section to denote a life lived. One day the signs went up, the weeks turned and the store emptied. So it goes.
We accept so many disappointments, things beyond our control that we forget what it’s like to hold a world we can’t imagine at our fingertips and in our hands. To share a conversation with someone who loved the books you’re getting, to listen to the sounds of those wrapped up in literary debate. There is something about a bookstore that makes you feel less alone, connected to both your inner child and to those around you, the books shared by those before you and those after you. That can’t be bottled, sold or replaced. Books can be replaced, bought anywhere, passed over from one to another, left on sidewalks. The magic of a bookstore, the smell, the hours spent pursuing with friends, lovers and family is unique to each own. Either in search of gifts or amusement, the bookstore becomes what the wanderer needs without them ever knowing it. A close friend, a solitary, a shared secret to the community. The ties that bind, the books that beckon, the elusiveness of it all.
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