I’m on the east coast for school, but come back home to Illinois occasionally. Went to a coffee shop to study for a bit, then decided to drop by and say hi to Mary Beth, the owner of the bookstore (called I Know You Like a Book) , on the way home. I’d been a customer of hers for years and loved browsing her store and picking up recommendations by her. She was also hugely supportive of local authors and stocked my books at her store

I noticed from a distance that the building had been repainted but didn’t think much of it. Then I got closer and found that the store had been replaced by some kind of interior design place. I walked in and asked where IKYLAB went, and the lady at the counter dropped a bombshell on me: not only had the store closed, but Mary Beth had passed away in July

Went home just feeling weird. I saw her last year when I came home for Thanksgiving and bought a couple of books that she recommended (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead and Women Talking). I’d wanted to tell her that I really enjoyed both, but damn, I wish I would have tried reaching out sooner

Just wanted to share this with someone. Support your local bookstores and stay well and healthy people

  • gx6wxwb@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I live in the south of England and though there used to be over a dozen second-hand and antiquarian booksellers nearby (within easy driving distance), almost all of them have closed down in the past few years.

    There’s now only three nearby that I’m aware of, plus a couple of small sections within flea markets that mostly deal with old books with decorative bindings. It’s horribly sad, my favourite thing in the world is browsing around old bookshops and making discoveries, which you just can’t do with Abebooks.

    I think I’m lucky that there’s still a handful near here, things seem to be even worse in the rest of the country.

    Recently I took a few days off work and made a pilgrimage to Hay-on-Wye for a long weekend just to go around all the bookshops there. Maybe lots of bookshops gathered together in a town like this, where they’ll attract book lovers as tourists, is the only way that experience will survive.

  • sublunari@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    The overall tendency of profit to decline strikes again! This is how things work under capitalism. Small business is fundamentally less efficient than big business, which means that consolidation tends to be the rule. The vast majority of small businesses across the USA have been on government life support for decades. (There is absolutely no way they would exist without the imperialist free ride gained from the USA’s dollar hegemony or from the USA’s settler-colonialism, for instance.) I know that in this particular case, the book store owner passed away, but it’s telling that whoever inherited the book store chose to close it down, probably because it wasn’t profitable, since Amazon and a few other huge retailers are pretty much the only book stores that are making any money these days.

  • Literaturevaults@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    It is her success that she left a well-wisher like you. None can avoid death. But we can live a humane and humble life.