Bookstores, The World Has Moved On, Part 12 — March 24, 2026 – John Agliata

THE DAILY UPDATE

There was a time when I was a teenager that I was convinced I would meet my future wife in a Waldenbooks.

I’d be doing what weird teenage me often did – wandering the narrow aisles of the mall-encapsulated bookstore – and there she would be, contentedly paging through a classic or checking out the jacket of a new release. She’s be quietly beautiful, shy … captivating. I’d say something witty about her selection, she’d laugh, and 50 years later we’d be bouncing our grandbabies on our knees.

Alas, I met my actual wife in the basement of our freshman door, and things have worked out pretty darn well for the two of us – much better than they did for Waldenbooks. It suffered a slow and painful death, first being acquired by Kmart, then merging with Borders in 1994 before liquidating and closing its few remaining stores in 2011.

The world has moved on from bookstores, and it’s all Jeff Bezos’ fault.

I’m old enough to remember that Amazon started out as an online bookstore, not the purveyor of everything from books to sex toys to cockroaches. In fact, I still have a travel coffee mug they sent to me as a freebie, a thank-you for an order back in, oh, 1997 or 1998. Long before Amazon came for, well, everything else, they came for Waldenbooks, and they absolutely slaughtered them.

Here’s the thing: I loved walking around a bookstore. Loved it. It was a place of endless possibilities. Every single book on every single shelf was a world into which I could lose myself, a world that wasn’t the confusing and often unhappy place I lived when I wasn’t reading. But I, like so many others, sat back while Amazon crushed each and every one of them. Worse, I participated in the crushing. How cool was it to have books show up at my house without me having to deal with a mall parking lot?

Very cool … until it wasn’t.

This weekend, Wifey Poo and I celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary. Before a dinner at our Italian restaurant on The Hill, we stopped at something I’m now incredibly grateful to see in existence: two local bookstores.

The first was little more than an oversized pantry, yet it was filled with patrons celebrating its grand opening. I wandered. I sampled. I bought a book … Pity the Reader: On Writing With Style by Kurt Vonnegut.

The second was bigger but empty save for us two. It’s in a nearby strip mall-ish-type thing that has a lot of vacant storefronts. Wifey Poo bought something for her sister. We talked to the owner. She was assembling a chair – something, she said, they did not teach in “own-a-bookstore school.”

If I had some money to bet, I’d wager neither store will be around to see, oh, perhaps the end of 2027. I hope I’m wrong. Desperately hope I’m wrong. But for as much as we all might say we value a true local bookstore and treasure the experience of walking around one, the world has moved on from us buying actual books from them in sufficient quantity to make them financially viable ventures over the long haul, I would imagine. It’s easier and cheaper to just order what we want on Amazon.

But that’s missing the point.

I had no clue there was even a book called Pity the Reader by Kurt Vonnegut before stumbling upon it on our first stop. That’s the point. The world is full of so many books and we can’t possibly read them all, but if we settle for what Amazon spoon-feeds us through algorithms and evil, we’ll never discover the little things our heart is truly desiring that we don’t even know exist.

Bookstores provided us a place to slow down, a place to test the waters on new genres and new authors and old favorites, a place to lose ourselves in new possibilities and the comfort of familiar authors. It was one of many places we had before the world moved on in which we could simply wander.

Online shopping for everything from books to tacos has afforded us conveniences that should free up time for us to wander more. Instead, we wander less. A lot less. We bury our heads in our phones and scroll stupid videos of morons doing dumb things and then tell people who genuinely want to meet and socialize as human beings that we’re too busy. We’re not too busy. We just have really, really bad priorities and even worse time management.

So here’s my challenge: Find a local bookstore. Go there. Buy a book or two. Or three or four. If you live in the local area, you can check out Double Dog Bookstore in Wentzville and Lakeside Bookshop in Lake Saint Louis. Find someone that speaks to your heart. Buy it. Find a quiet somewhere. Read it.

Oh, and while you’re there, keep your head up: I didn’t meet my wife in one, but maybe you will.