My Reaction To The Closing Of Borders

I love books. That means I love reading books, collecting books, turning a books pages, placing a book under my nose and flipping the pages so I am able to smell the fresh scent of a new book, and I especially love shopping for books. I love a nice trip to the bookstore, which to me is like a carnival for the young ones, and I just like to send myself into paradise as I skim through the shelves and look at all of the different authors and all of the different names. It's unfortunate that one of these heavyweight bookstores, Borders, is shutting all of its remaining stores down after failing to keep pace with the way book selling is like to this day. Once the biggest name, and then the only competitor of Barnes & Noble, the days of going to Borders has now come to an unfortunate end.

My closest experience thus far to witnessing and feeling what the tragedy of Borders shutting down is when I went to the Waldenbooks at my mall, which became a part of Borders. The only good thing to come out of this situation is that the clearance sales become bigger and bigger. When I went to Waldenbooks for the last time, I got all of my books for 50% off, which is a great deal for many of the books. It's a saddening sale, knowing that the store is only having this sale because it's shutting down its door after all is said and done, but it's fun while it lasts.

At this point, Barnes & Noble remains the lone big name bookstore that stands. Whether or not any bookstore will be able to come up along the ranks is tough to stay, but it's going to be very hard with the rise of electronic books. Barnes & Noble is doing well with its "nook," as Amazon.com is doing well with its "Kindle." Electronic books are becoming the thing of the generation. It seems like once you get the hang of it, you never want to return to reading a regular book again.

I don't have much of a personal experience with electronic books. I got one "Sharper Image" e-book for Christmas one year and haven't used it so much. There are a lot of strengths to having an electronic book, but there's something special about traditional books that makes reading worth the experience. There's something special about holding a book in your hands, touching it, feeling it, turning the pages, things that can't be done by pressing a button. I can believe that I will ultimately get the hang of using a "nook" or a "Kindle," but at this point, I like reading actual books.

Losing Borders is a big deal to the world of book shopping in general. That will leave Barnes & Noble as the only big name bookstore. While other stores sell books, the selection is limited. Besides Barnes & Noble, you would have to rely on flea markets, bargain book stores, and libraries to keep up with books. The era of physical books is beginning to fade and may very well keep fading and fading until we are left with a world of electronics. It's not at all a bad thing, but I still like holding a nice novel in my hands, and reading that.