One of my favorite things to do is read. When I was little, I used to spend all my allowance in Borders. I took my $5 and went straight to the children’s section. It was fun for me, taking my money with us on family shopping trips, and spending hours at a time searching for the perfect book. Eventually, I found what I thought was the best series in the whole world, and I bought almost every book out of collection of 24 novels.
I always noticed there would be lots of people reading in the coffee area of Borders, and that was what I hoped to do some day. I wanted to spend all of my Saturdays reading and drinking coffee.
Now that I’m older, I still love reading, and now I’ve developed a great taste for coffee, but I don’t like when I see people spending all day in bookstores reading.
Here’s why.
People go into bookstores and read a whole book while they’re there. Then they put it back. If not all of it, they read nearly the entire novel.
If you want to read an entire book and then put it back, go to a library. That’s what they’re for.
Book stores can’t survive if people read books and then set them back. Why do you think Borders went out of business? To read a whole book in a bookstore without buying it is, in my mind, cheating. If you love the bookstore, you need to support it by buying the books you love to read.
What’s worse than sitting in a bookstore reading all day is damaging the books while you’re using them. So many times when I would go to Borders and flip through some pages, I’d see coffee stains, ripped pages, or some other sort of stain or damaged mark. This isn’t right. If you want to sit in the store and read all day, that’s your deal, but at least take care of the books. Otherwise, that’s just rude.
Accidents happen, I know that, but take responsibility for your actions. Don’t leave it and stuff it back on the shelf to try and cover something up. Be an adult and let someone know.
Sometimes it’s hard to put a book down when you start to read. When I’ve started reading a book to get a feel for what it’s like, I sometimes can’t stop. It’s too good. If this happens to you a lot, I have a suggestion.
If you don’t want to pay for the book, look for it at your local library. If you can’t find it there, don’t lose heart. Someone you know might have the book, or there is the MORE online library site that connects to lots of different libraries. Chances are, you’re bound to find the book somewhere.
Some people might argue this is just as bad for bookstores. You go in, scope out the field, and then leave to find the book for free somewhere.
It is bad in the sense that they won’t get money out of a purchase, but I think it’s much better than spending a whole day in a bookstore reading a novel and then putting it back. In my mind, you have fully used the services of the book store, but haven’t paid anything. That’s not right. If you read a whole book in one day, you must have liked it. Buy it. Read it again. Pass it on to a friend. Give it as a gift, but don’t put it back. Book stores can’t afford that.
