My town used to be a farming town that quickly overdeveloped into a crowded subarb- as a result, there is no downtown in my town and a lot of the charm that a traditional downtown has in most towns was lost in Piscataway. When everyone was talking about quaint bookstores in class yesterday, I was amazed to hear about the personality of the different bookstores in their towns. In my town, we had a Waldenbooks that closed down a few years ago, and since then there has been no replacement bookstore, so I’ve been forced to go to Barnes and Nobles to buy my books. I’ve never seen how charming a little bookstore could be, but I wish I could have experienced that little charm that small-town bookstores seem to hold. It definitely made me realize the impact of not just book monopolies, but also e-books – barnes and nobles have their nook, but small town bookstores don’t have any equivalent of a bookstore. They’re being left behind.
My neighborhood still has its small bookstore, but there is constantly turnover there. For many years, Tower Books sat next to Tower Records. Both, however, went out of business within the last few years. The new record and bookstore now located there continue to be small and independent, but I worry how long they will survive until the monopolies and internet undercut their business to a point of extinction.