64. The death of the bookstore was greatly exaggerated

FOR YEARS BOOKSTORES have been the repository of, along with books, a lot of highly romantic feelings. They crop up in fictional settings rather more often than their retail peers; the list of examples is long and charming and includes the Shop Around the Corner (You’ve Got Mail), the Travel Book Co. (Notting Hill) and Women and Women First (Portlandia). Part of that appeal lies in the sense that bookstores, especially independent ones, belong to a bygone era—there’s a delicious moribund melancholy about