I am hoping that this will speed a resurgence of little local bookstores . . . I do love a small used and new mixed bookstore.

Interesting point. The used book market should be flooded with all the books from these closings. Unless they do the tear the cover off bury them in a pit thing.

I would love to have a bookstore near me like that!

I always like B&N better than Borders for the Big Box store options (I was just at B&N last night). But, what I really miss is Acres of Books - the best used book store on the planet. The day it closed was a very sad day.

I'm also curious if this is going to make BN a stronger entity or if it will go the way of Borders. They've put much more investment in technology to retain customers with their Nook (which has a cool new version that was just released).

My mom bought, and returned a Nook. She said it was too hard to use.

I have a Nook color and love it, thought I wish I had an actual tablet for the data connection.

Yes, while it is a bit sad as the older, more comfortable things pass; the new things we only dreamed of become reality. It is an exciting time to be alive!

I still have a bunch of Pickwick Bookshops bookmarks.

When I was married my husband worked for Pickwick which later became B. Dalton. The people he worked with were a wonderful book-loving bunch. Then slowly the business changed and the people working changed and at parties where everyone used to talk books they were all talking retail. It was very sad.

I worked at a B. Dalton's in the DeVargas Mall in Santa Fe, NM, back in 1984. My coworkers didn't talk books all that much with me, but the customers damn sure did. It was very low paying but I knew the stock really well, and had a pretty good intuition for what people were looking for when they came in saying, "I don't know the title or the author, but it's something about a guy, and there's this thing that happens." (The latest Stephen King novel? why, yes, that's it!

Also, because it was 1984, we had a big cardboard standee at the front of the store fully stocked with paperback copies of George Orwell's 1984. People would regularly walk past it, or brush against it, or trip over it, and then approach me and ask if we carried that book.

I spent all my paycheck on books.

I put a nail on the bookstore coffin today. I got my Kindle. Of course, I will only use it for books that have no pictures, so all of the art/craft/gardening books I guy will still be purchased as real books.

I feel no guilt in admitting I love my Kindle :)