“The small independent bookstore is coming back,” Ann Patchett says, and has said, often. In “The Bookstore Strikes Back” (The Atlantic, 28 November 2012), she describes a place you’ve probably been in yourself:
The bookstore of my youth was Mills. My sister and I used to walk there every day after school, stopping first to check out the puppies in the pet shop across the street, then going on to admire the glossy covers of the Kristin Lavransdatter series, which is what girls read after they finished Little House on the Prairie and its sequels back before the Twilight books were written. Mills could not have been more than 700 square feet, and the people who worked there remembered who you were and what you read, even if you were 10.
I’ve been in that very bookstore—in California, where I grew up; in Dublin, where the Irishman grew up; in the sleepy college town I live in now. I seek out those very bookstores in every city I visit.
You’ve been there, too, so you know the magic to be found therein. This little video made the rounds a while back, but it’s delightful—and every time I watch it I’m overwhelmed by the amount of work it must have taken.
Enjoy this! And tell me—do you have a favorite bookstore?
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