…this from the Atlantic (which is, truth be told, a great place to read about bookstores), a tale of a new independent bookstore born. When two longstanding independent bookstores closed in Nashville TN (one being a Borders), author Ann Patchett took matters into her own hands and opened a bookstore called Parnassus Books. The article is an account of the successful start for Parnassus, and includes this great call to arms from Patchett for the reader, for the book enthusiast:
If what a bookstore offers matters to you, then shop at a bookstore. If you feel that the experience of reading a book is valuable, then read a book. This is how we change the world: We grab hold of it. We change ourselves.
Book buying as civil disobedience–well not exactly, much of the article is, not surprisingly, about her reaction to/contemplation of all the people who told her that print books were dead and the idea of trying to sell them was ill-informed–but you can read her here as a bibliophile’s Self Reliance, an argument that the empowerment of print books is very much a matter for readers, not digerati. Good news and a good read in Nashville…