Shop around the corner

Thanks to Mis Hooz for sending me this, a nice feature from The Morning News about a used bookstore in Brooklyn called Freebird Books and how it's surviving in the face of continued big chain bookstore growth and internet booksellers (not just Amazon.com, but people selling books out of their basements and garages).

To me, there's a romance about used bookstores, getting lost among the ceiling-high shelves and chest-high stacks of books, the somewhat musty smell of the paper, finding something that you'd always been looking for or forgotten that you'd wanted. I also love the idea, one that this article points out nicely, that a good independent bookstore reflects the neighborhood it resides in.