One of my simple pleasures is dropping by the big bookstores to browse the magazine racks. And one of the most convenient locations is the giant Books-A-Million not far from my office, whose magazine display seems to stretch for miles. I probably stop by there once every couple of weeks to leaf through my favorite titles in travel, music, business, tech and so on.
So imagine my surprise yesterday when I arrived to find the place shuttered, empty, a ghost town. Another victim of the recession or the trend toward online book-buying.
There is no other big bookstore anywhere close to my office, so perusing a wide spectrum of periodicals over lunch is pretty much out of the question now.
I guess I'm partly to blame. I rarely bought anything there. It just served as a nice, comfortable place to burn 15 or 20 minutes.