Civilization heading toward self-destruction
Editor, The Times:
Thank you for the Jan. 31 column by Danny Westneat [“Bookstores may have to turn the page,” NWSunday]. It was devastating to learn how book sales fell 60 percent compared with last January. I never realized that people were predicting the end of the bookstore and that Borders is now a penny stock — to say nothing of the recent closings of Bailey/Coy and Horizon Books on Capitol Hill. A bookseller confides there are forces larger than ours out there. I’m guessing one of those forces is Amazon and another is the technology that it, along with other companies, is creating — like the Kindle.
It makes me think how it is said that necessity is the mother of invention, but how, in this case, economic profit is the mother of invention. It seems like we are willing to risk our sense of place, our sense of history, our sense of what it means to be human to the altar of efficiency, expediency and the narcotic of the new, the quick, the fast and the entertaining.
This prediction of the end of books makes it seem like civilization is headed down some sort of intentional path. To me, it feels as if we’re on the road to nowhere, heading toward a cliff, with our self-destruction being our final destination.
Could we all just slow down for a spell and take stock of where we are — and then maybe figure out who we are? What makes us think that the goal of life is just to keep going without forethought of where we’re going and what kind of footprints we’re making on our way there?
Currently this competition for the eyeball in the name of “screen time” seems to be about distancing ourselves further and further from a direct experience of life.
— Joel Gillman, Bellingham
Stores closing, but Bookworm maintaining tradition
Please keep writing about the plight of bookstores — particularly independent bookstores that are struggling to keep their doors open. Places where customers and owners know each other make our lives a little richer.
[However,] Danny Westneat wrote in his column that Bookworm Exchange in Columbia City is “likely to close this spring.” That is not the case. I’ve been curating and hosting an evening of poetry at Bookworm Exchange for more than five years — and doing a poetry night in Columbia City for nine years now!
When I read in your column that Bookworm was closing this spring, I contacted the owner, Jim Holmes. [He said] he’s not closing this spring. He needs more customers, but the business is staying open through the rest of 2010. Hopefully a few more customers will buy a few more books every week and keep the place open for several more years.
Independent bookstores are an endangered species. Seattle has lost some good ones in the last couple of years. But Bookworm Exchange and my monthly poetry series inside the store on the third Friday of each month will continue.
— Christopher J. Jarmick, Bellevue