What would you do if, all of a sudden, your favorite source of books was unavailable?

Whether it’s a local book shop, your town library, or an internet shop … what would you do if, suddenly, they were out of business? Devastatingly, and with no warning? Where would you go for books instead? What would you do? If it was a local business you would try to help out the owners? Would you just calmly start buying from some other store? Visit the library in the next town instead? Would it be devastating? Or just a blip in your reading habit?

******

My first reaction to this week’s question was, “I’d calmly start buying from another store.” One thing we don’t lack in this country is consumer alternatives.

But that’s a superficial answer. I do have ties to certain book suppliers, especially physical places. At this point in my life, my main supplier would be my local library. There are three branches in close range, all part of a system that encompasses four counties. So if one burned down, I’d still have access to a lot of books.

Nevertheless, I and my two young daughters already have attachments to these libraries. I still have a fond affection for the local library I grew up with in another town, which was an old mansion with a spiral staircase, creaky floors, and in which I beat my friend Christina in a reading contest when I was in second grade. My daughters are developing similar memories of our libraries right now. They call one “the brown library,” one “the red library,” and one “the library with the stuffed animals.”

“The brown library” has the dvd The Little Horse That Could, which my oldest (7) can only go so long without desperately needing to check out again. “The library with the stuffed animals” also has two goldfish that my youngest (4) engages in conversation every time we go, and then makes a beeline for the well-known location of the Dr. Suess books. “The red library” was my mother’s when she was a little girl, and it has all the Narnia books on cd, read superbly by various actors. Right now we have The Voyage of the Dawn Treader read by Derek Jacobi, and every time I go by the door while my daughters are listening, I smile because his reading is so perfect. We’ve even taken to repeating certain fragments of the dialogue, trying to imitate his voice:

“Tell me your price, carrion! Do you think I want to hear the rigamarole of your filthy trade?”

or, “Oh that’s just the trouble with boys!”

One daughter asked me what a poltroon was just yesterday. This audiobook is clearly getting under our skin! And let’s not forget its wonderful description of the room where Lucy reads the magician’s book — beautiful books lining the walls and giving off the smell of learning.

All of this to say, when we talk about books, and consequently book suppliers, we’re talking about something that touches nerves deep down. I remember when I left Kentucky to move to the Northeast to get married, and feeling grief that I was having to put so much distance between myself and Joseph-Beth Booksellers, a magnificent biblio-palace that remains my favorite store of all time. You could literally get lost there for days. So I guess the record shows that if something happened to my current book supplier, I wouldn’t be devastated — but I’d feel it. I’d mourn. And so would my daughters, which would compound it.