Bookstores, libraries or coffee shops?

At night, when the store was no longer a place of business, no longer failing, it became what it had been to me as a child. A library. A collection of stories, with endless possibilities that belonged exclusively to me.

Amy Meyerson, The Bookshop of Yesterdays

To a child, I suppose, a bookshop might be indistinguishable from a library. There are lots of books in an area set aside for children, where one is free to sit on the floor and leaf through them. If you are lucky and well-behaved, Mommy might even let you take some home.

Dudley's Bookshop Cafe in Bend, Oregon

The above lines from Amy Meyerson's novel seem somehow nostalgic, almost poetic. From an adult perspective, however, it seems to me that bookstores have become too much like libraries. That might be a good thing for those who like to use them like libraries, as places to sit and read, and perhaps even to do a little research and writing. For those of us who see a bookshop as a place to shop for books to read at home, this is not such an attractive development. (I make an exception for those places whose main business is food service, not book sales, where shelves of books provide atmosphere. I love a book atmosphere.)

Much of this stems from the fact that bookstores, especially large bookstores, have found that cafes generate a lot of additional business. When people come in for coffee and muffins, some of them might actually buy books. If not, they have at least purchased some coffee and muffins. The bookshop in Meyerson's novel has a cafe that is more profitable than the book side of the business.

Cafe customers are usually free to take books, magazines and even newspapers from the store's shelves and read them while they enjoy their coffee and muffins, then put them back on the shelves, perhaps sometimes even where they belong. For this reason I rarely buy the top book or magazine on a shelf, instead choosing one farther down that is less likely to be used and coffee-stained.

And then there are the many chairs scattered around in bookstores, especially in the magazine area, that invite customers (or non-customers, as frequently is the case) to sit and relax and enjoy the merchandise library-style, while their feet stick out into the area where actual shoppers are trying to walk.

There's a Barnes & Noble in Clearwater, Fla., that has chairs throughout the fiction section, usually occupied by readers who appear to have been there all day. Getting past them can be a challenge, especially the long-legged ones.

I like bookshops. I like libraries. I also like cafes. I am less fond of places that try to blend the three into one. I remember once hearing author Ann Patchett, co-owner of a bookshop in Nashville, say that she wanted to sell books, not coffee. When I later visited her store I was pleased to see no coffee and very few chairs. It's a bookshop that actually runs like a bookshop.