Borders Closes—Like Sam Goody, Wherehouse, Blockbuster ...

I was a little sad to hear that we are losing our bookstore in Mission Viejo.

I remember going in there when I was newly pregnant and purchasing What to Expect When You’re Expecting and about a dozen other parental preparation manuals.

Once I had kids, my bookstore visits became less frequent, even as much as I like to read. I've traded bookstores for reading time at the library for my little ones.

Over my lifetime, as youthful as I am (I prefer "youthful" to "middle-aged") I was thinking how  could be blamed on the economy, and that is partly true. But then I started thinking about all the different chain and box stores that have left us because of technology and change (not the Barack Obama kind of change).

We have evolved, and things have changed, and life has adapted every time. Who remembers Licorice Pizza stores, Sam Goody, the Wherehouse, Tower Records and Virgin Megastores? I remember being a teen and spending hours at the mall flipping through actual record albums.

I will really age myself now: Who remembers 8-track tapes? Even when CDs were put on the market, we went to the store and bought our music. Then music videos were all the rage. We evolved, and now we buy our music via iTunes or Amazon or, on the rare occasion you actually purchase CDs, at Target or Walmart. It was an evolution.

Although it's sad that all those places are no longer here, who doesn’t love his iPod, iTunes and music online?  Online music MP3s were going to be the demise of the music industry. But musicians seem to be surviving just fine—they had to adapt.

I remember going to rent a video cassette at Blockbuster on a Friday night and standing in a 30-minute line to get my videos, and now most,  if not all, of the Blockbuster stores in the area along with the mom-and-pop video stores are replaced with Redbox, Netflix and streaming via your Wii. Who would have thought that movies would come over the Internet?

And all along, all this technology has helped and hindered us. It put places out of business but made things so much more convenient and easy for you and me.

I love all that technology stuff (even if I can’t afford all of it). But anything that makes me not have to take my two kids into a store is fine by me.

As far as the books go, I’m not sure I will ever be able to go e-Reader. You see, I love books. I like the feel, the weight of them, the look of them, the smell of them. I like those things about the books on my shelves that look like trophies and the things I’ve accomplished or learned by reading.

I like borrowing books, lending books and getting them at the library or from friends. I like going to the bookstore and killing time or buying books. So I’m sad at the loss of another store, and especially for those who have lost jobs because of it, but thinking about what will evolve leaves me hopeful for something better for our lives.