Borders' plunge shows booksellers' uncertain future

BY STEVE  JANOSKI

For the great majority of the American public that has not read a book since high school and is only vaguely aware that they're still printed, the slow death of the mega-chain Borders might slip by unnoticed except for the passing recognition of yet another empty storefront gazing out at the highway.

For some of us though, the ones who spent a great deal of time (and a great deal of money) in that cavernous building on Route 23, it is as if a dear old friend has passed.

I've always liked bookstores, as they actively catered to my two addictions: the printed word in all its forms, and coffee. And I loved them for it.

As a kid (and later, as an adult) I wandered their aisles for hours, reading pieces of this and that and marveling at the collected knowledge that sat upon the shelves, wondering if I would ever have the time to read all the things I wanted to.

I'll admit, I always liked Barnes and Noble better. It was, in my eyes, more the “Gray Lady” of that industry - more books, no music, and a bit more stuck up and crotchety. It gets away with this, of course, because it is a bookstore, and most of us who frequent bookstores are a bit stuck up and crotchety.

Borders was always like Barnes and Noble's reckless younger sibling - less books, more music, better prices, a bit more lively. How reckless they were, however, we weren't to know until they finally imploded last month and declared that they'd be going out of business.

Now, the place is a cemetery, and great towering shelves full of liquidator garbage sit where novels once did and a pall pervades the air as the signs declaring that “Everything must go” hang lifelessly from the ceiling.

It is a sad state of affairs…but there may yet be hope.

I am too young to remember the days of the corner bookstore, and all too aware of the increasing influence of the e-readers like Kindle and Nook (neither of which I am onboard with yet), but I have a sincere hope that the crumbling of this brick-and-mortar empire will lead to some kind of resurgence amongst those individual booksellers who had been driven from the field upon Borders' arrival.

Maybe, just maybe, we will see a slew of small Bookends-type shops begin to pop up and fill the void left by the behemoth's fall.

After all, I am very particular about the books I buy, and I have an odd routine that I follow that involves opening to some random page and seeing if the thing can hold my attention long enough for me to justify spending money on it.

And then there's the feeling you get when you physically hold a book in your hands. It's as if you're holding a direct link to history, to the thoughts and musings of the greatest minds that have ever lived, like Paine and Dickens and Rousseau and Voltaire, who spent their lives collecting, disseminating, and fashioning a creation that has a weight and heft (both literally and figuratively) that has to be felt to be understood.

That's hard to replicate through Amazon.com.

For now though, Barnes and Noble sits on its Route 46 perch as the last of the old guard, the only surviving king on a decimated chess board, and few of us know where the game is headed.

Until we do, I suspect that old-school onlookers like me will grip tightly our printed versions of the New York Times and “Les Miserables” and cringe, waiting to see what this future holds.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com