I used to work for the now defunked BORDERS. You remember, that OTHER mainstream commercial bookstore.  Although I certainly will agree that in it’s last years it was no longer what it had represented as an overall company and a mere seller of books, I stuck wit’ it to the end. 

The area I grew up in was a small desert town made into a recognizable geographical location by the other two neighboring towns. Calexico, flanked the Mexico/U.S. border so, really, for me, it might as well have been in Mexico. El Centro was a few miles away and was the “metropolitan” town. By Metropolitan I mean it was the town that boasted a reatail scene by having the only Woolworths back in the day and exposing our town to our first Wal-mart.  My hometown, Brawley, was the upper middle class soccer mom to El Centro’s middle class working girl, to Calexico’s lower class first generation immigrant cousin. 

My point? Neither in these three towns nor within the several hundred miles surrounding us, was there a bookstore.  Well, correction: there was “The Book Store” which maintained your typical newstand fare to front for what they really made money off of, the”books” and “educational videos” they sold in the much larger, enclosed portion of the store. Oh yes, and a small local bookstore which, really, only sold christian fiction and romance novels.

To be frank (Anne), I’ve yet to truly understand when or even how I acquired my penchant for reading, considering that I was neither physically nor in any other abstract way surrounded by a reading culture. Thusly, on those once- maybe twice-a-year trips we made to San Diego I ached, ACHED, to go to a mall or shopping center with a BORDERS or BARNES AND NOBLE or WALDENBOOKS or B. DALTONS.  I rarely had the money to buy any books but I simply loved walking around browsing all the NEW books! I spent a considerable amount of time in our public library but, gosh, these books were new!

As I got older and more, ahem, worldly, I grew to prefer BORDERS above the others. When I started to work there, I became even more attached to it or, really, the IDEAL of it.  I worked there for six years, the most defining years to date of my life, and even though only the first two or so were all they panned out to be, I maintained a loyal employee and customer.  Now that it no longer exists and I currenlty live in Las Vegas where there isn’t a strong local culture for anything, I still haven’t managed to let go of my elitism, if you will.

I’m currently in a poor fiscal state where spending 20 dollars on a hardcover book is just not viable.  There are several books I really want to  buy/read but, in essence, my only options now make me feel guilty. 

If I spend 40 bucks on the two new hardcovers I want, I feel guilty for spending that amount of money on a “non-essential”

If I just go to the bookstore and read without buying, I feel guilty because I’m perpetuating a part of what causes bookstores to go under.

If I  buy it from BARNES AND NOBLE, I feel guilty and (irrationally) traitorous

If I buy from AMAZON or WALMART or COSTCO where the books are conspicously cheaper, I feel guilty because I am, again, feeding an animal that is devouring bookstores.

I’d love to stick wit’ my public library but, in the inimitable words of Veruca Salt, I want it NOW!

So here I sit, caught in a literary and anti-consumerist(ish) existential crisis.  Lifting my fists up to the heavens asking “Why? WHY?” I know I will have to come to terms with one, or all, of the above but, damn, it’s hard.  I’ve spent a large portion of my life being defined by the physicality of bound books and, although I am not against the digital life, I still can’t manage to jump on it’s bandwagon when it comes to books.

Can’t we all just get along? Can’t we have our bound books and read them too?