Why a Bookstore is a Perfect Refuge for Our Troubled Times
A shelter from the storm
As we finally start to emerge from the hardest, strangest year that most of us have ever experienced, the global focus is on immunization, and rightly so (get the shot if you haven’t yet). But while Pfizer and Moderna have a vaccine to protect us from COVID-19, there’s no magic injection for the psychological part of what we’ve all lived through. And while it may sound counterintuitive given that we’ve been isolated from each other for so long, what many of us need is a refuge.
One place has always been such a refuge, and one of the most frustrating aspects of quarantines and lockdowns is that we have been separated from these havens that we took for granted for so long. For book lovers, the place that has always been a shelter in the storm is the local bookstore, though too often we see it simply as a means to an end, the end being a place to get books. Bookstores are a marketplace, yes, but they are an oasis as well.
How exactly does a bookstore function as a refuge in the midst of the storm of chaos we face every day? The answer will differ somewhat for every individual, but some common factors make it such a refuge.
For those of you who remember the TV series Cheers, the tag line was: “sometimes you want to go where…
