Goodbye Books & Co......
Jul. 19th, 2011 12:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poltr1When I first moved to Dayton in the summer of 1989, my co-workers told me about a wonderful bookstore in Kettering, Ohio, called Books & Co.M. Previously, my experience with bookstores was very limited -- the Waldenbooks at the Boulevard Mall in Amherst, NY, the Village Green Bookstore further down the road, and the Buffalo Bookstore in the Century Mall.
And so I went to this bookstore, in the Town &l Country Shopping Center in Kettering. And I loved it. It was the largest bookstore I had been in, the in-store selection was wonderful, and there were planty of nooks for customers to curl up and read, without staff haranguing you with "Buy it or leave it, it's not a library here". They even had a cat wandering (and sleeping in) the bookshelves.
I returned for many future visits and purchases, and book signings. It was there that I met Douglas Adams, Og Mandino, and George Takei.
And in the early 2000s, something awful happened. Books & Co. was sold to the folks who own the Books-A-Million chain. They tried to keep the Books & Co. flavor. They opened a second store in the Greene shopping complex, which became the new flagship. And the original store languished. I jsut found out this past week that the original store is closing, and will become a 2nd & Charles store, specializing in previously owned books. (Article from the Dayton Daily News here.)
So, yeah, I'm sad. Another chapter in Dayton's history ends.
And so I went to this bookstore, in the Town &l Country Shopping Center in Kettering. And I loved it. It was the largest bookstore I had been in, the in-store selection was wonderful, and there were planty of nooks for customers to curl up and read, without staff haranguing you with "Buy it or leave it, it's not a library here". They even had a cat wandering (and sleeping in) the bookshelves.
I returned for many future visits and purchases, and book signings. It was there that I met Douglas Adams, Og Mandino, and George Takei.
And in the early 2000s, something awful happened. Books & Co. was sold to the folks who own the Books-A-Million chain. They tried to keep the Books & Co. flavor. They opened a second store in the Greene shopping complex, which became the new flagship. And the original store languished. I jsut found out this past week that the original store is closing, and will become a 2nd & Charles store, specializing in previously owned books. (Article from the Dayton Daily News here.)
So, yeah, I'm sad. Another chapter in Dayton's history ends.
