I’ve been jonesing for the Barnes and Noble to open its latest store nary half a mile from my office. I’ve been envisioning lovely lunches spent reading expensive photography books while drinking warm Blackberry & Sage tea or writing in my red velvet schmancy journal which I never write in. I’m agog with delight over the prospect of ensconcing myself in a nice new overly stuffed chair and putting my feet up on their hearthstone before the gas fireplace.
But here’s the stitch.
My local lovely independent bookseller, with it’s green slate floors, two cats named Stan and Ollie, and its abundance of Margaret Atwood and Gerald Locklin books. My lovely independent bookstore in which I have read barely dry short stories to adoring listeners sitting in antique chairs. I read an article about them in the local newspaper, about how they’re not worried, about how they have very loyal customers who won’t be lured by a Starbucks, Godiva chocolates and gaggles of comfy armchairs.
In my excitement to have tens of literary journals at my beck and call, I had forgotten about my little 18×30 bookstore with no discernible parking spaces.
Hence, the guilt. And the fact that it is EXACTLY like the plot of You’ve Got Mail doesn’t help. If they end up closing and put up a little sign in their window that says ‘We have loved being a part of your lives’, I will just vomit.
Then I’ll probably need a Godiva chocolate and a nice comfy chair while I read the latest issue of Utne Reader to get over it.