In response to a letter to the editor last week lamenting the end of bookstores. Actually, locally-owned bookstores are doing just fine. Below please see the “Bookshop Manifesto” to understand some of the reasons why.
“We believe in the book. We believe in quieting the noise and listening to the stories. We believe in traveling far and wide between paper pages. We believe in touching the words, scribbling in the margins, and dogging the ears. We believe in surrounding ourselves with books long finished and books not yet read; in revisiting our younger selves each time we pull old favorites off the shelf.
“We believe in 5-year-olds inking their names in big letters on the flyleaf. We believe in becoming someone else for 400 pages. We believe in turning off the screens and unplugging the networks once in awhile. We believe in meeting the author, reading the footnotes, looking up the words and checking the references. We believe in holding our children on our laps and turning pages together.
“We believe in standing shoulder-to-shoulder in comfortable silence with our fellow citizens before a good shelf of books; we believe in talking face-to-face with friends and strangers in the aisles of a good bookstore. We believe that together, readers, writers, books and bookstores can work magic. …” -Thanks to Gallery Bookshop.
Cheri Holden, Owner Watershed Books
Lakeport
