The used book store in my town closed last week because the landlord raised the rent. At the last day half-price sale I picked up a Charles Dickens’ which seemed fitting in the soon-to-be orphaned space.

Books were off the shelves. Shelves off the walls. Unsold books were piled on makeshift plywood carts, no longer aligned in elegant alphabetical order. The staff offered cider and tried to be upbeat but I kind of felt like a fringe relative picking through the remains of the empty family home.

Too dramatic? Maybe. But how else can you react when a book store disappears?  The used book store was a fixture on Main Street.  A destination bookstore for fans from out of the area, a rainy day stop for locals and a fitting shelter for your own old books when it was their time to move on.

The staff said the old book business will be folded into another store in a nearby town but they hope to one day return.  Yeah, we know what happens when a good old friend packs up.

Meanwhile, just around the corner the town library closed. For remodeling, said the sign. The librarians promise it will be more jumping than ever when it re-opens. The same library reduced its schedule last year. Regulars get nervous when a library cuts hours, thins staff and puts up a closed sign, if only for three months.

I’m not going to blame any of this on my friends who’ve gone over to the dark side. Kindles, Nooks and e-readers are clearly here to stay and I’ve tried to stop grousing about them, saving my curled lip for landlords who raise the rent in a recession.

Over Christmas I was in a bookstore line when the man behind me held up State of Wonder by Ann Patchett and asked if I knew the book. I said I was waiting for the paperback. He was buying it for his wife, he said, adding that she had breast cancer and loved women authors. Who else would I recommend? I said our book club is wild for Alice Munro. He excused himself and disappeared into the M section.

Ann Patchett has opened up her own independent book store in Nashville. She said she has no interest in living in a city without a bookstore. And who would?Although the used book emporium is gone from our town the independent bookstore with new books thankfully hangs in there.

Last winter in Truckee my daughter and granddaughter and I trudged through a mountain blizzard to a small book store, warm and smelling of hot chocolate. I found an Edith Wharton, my daughter a Bill Bryson and my granddaughter a picture book. Is there a comparable Kindle moment?

If everyone was to eventually give up hard copy books and go electronic our towns would lose their literary center. And what would become of the books themselves?

We have six bookcases in our small two bedroom house. When they fill up and we need to purge we take our books to the hospice thrift store. Or give them to the library for their book sale. Or take them to the late great used book store downtown.

Knowing your books will find a good new home makes it easier to give them up. It would be a sin to throw a book in the trash or put it into a recycling bin. To do so would surely call forth the ghosts of the greats. Emily Dickinson might haunt you, as well she should, and I imagine she can be pretty snappish.

It may not be a technique approved by reading and writing experts, but it worked for my husband and his daughter. She was in grade school and struggling over a book, 10 or 15 pages into it, and ready to give up.

It was one of those times when kids start to puddle up and parents start to breathe heavily and you know you’re in for a learning moment. So they sat together on the couch, opened her book and started reading it. Backwards.

Some people would frown and call him a spoiler, but his intent was not to give away the ending. He wanted to show her that the story was indeed going somewhere. They turned to the second to the last chapter in the book, read it and he asked her, “How do you suppose they got to this place?” And then they backed up another chapter and he asked the same. Pretty soon she became interested in trying to figure out the path of the story, from the beginning. She started over and finished the book. And, the best thing, she became a dedicated, passionate, constant inhaler of books and a teacher, now sharing her love of words with second graders.

Another daughter became a lawyer which took her into a different world of reading and writing. Big books, hard words, lots of syllables, long tedious sentences. But in addition to mastering legalese, she can still tell a succinct, funny story. And she’s not shy about sharing her opinions in writing, sending advice to Barack Obama when he was a candidate and turning out newspaper commentary like one defending the president’s nomination of Dawn Johnsen to the office of legal counsel .

She’s also on the library board and this weekend hosts a fund-raiser where book lovers mingle with authors and dine inside the library. (Go to www.scplf.org)
Another daughter has her first book coming out next week, a memoir based on her first year as a stepmother. This one never intended to have children nor planned to be an author, but now there’s her picture on a shiny new Random House paperback. (See www.izzy-rose.com)

But we have books.

I’m bragging about my daughters because I’ve been thinking that parents pass on many things to their children they may not even recognize as valuable at the time. Our children will not inherit grand pianos and silver tea services, and forget those pitiful stocks. The house is no longer worth the money we put into it. But we have books, stacked and stored all over the house, including my husband’s “Life and Times of Wyatt Earp” and my “Golden Book of Fairy Tales” and a tiny Bible that my mother got when she was 11 from her parents.

As books become more endangered, the publishing industry walloped by the economy and competition from the internet, there are still many of us who can’t imagine a bath, a bedtime, a vacation, a stolen hour on the porch without a book. This week a woman stopped me at the gym to rave about the latest Rose Tremain novel. At a play a friend walked up and said “Astrid and Veronika” by Linda Olsson. I responded with, “Loving Frank” by Nancy Horan.

The latest pick by the youngest reader in the family, age three, is “A New Barker in the House.” It’s about a Welsh terrier family with twins that adopts a brother who speaks Spanish. Some people would have you read it over and over.

As a reader and writer and member of that large demographic of bookish Boomer women, I am making a plea for real women to buy real books. That is, from a real, not a virtual, book store – a bell-jingling, coffee-brewing, pet the cat and spend an hour book store. Where you and a stranger might discuss the latest Annie Dillard. And where a clerk may even know your tastes and nudge you into novel by a great new unknown. And yes, sure, where you will likely pay full price, plus tax.

So it costs a bit more to pay retail, the pleasure of reading is still a bargain. As we cut down on eating out, bar hopping and going to movies, we’ll rely even more on books to fuel us through the cold winter. And if we pay a fair price we’ll be giving back, helping to keep a community business alive, along with the greater world of publishers and authors.

With that in mind I’m making a New Year’s vow to confine my book buying to book stores, preferably independents and local. And to visit the library when my book budget needs relief. It’s not a big deal pledge, in fact very easy for me since I am lucky to live in a town with two surviving book stores and a library. But I’ve done my share of online ordering. When it’s raining. Or I’m feeling lazy. Or when I’m feeling poor and rationalizing that cheapest is best.

I decided to get firm after reading another sad commentary on the book business by New York Times writer David Streitfeld. An admitted bargain book hunter, he confessed to being the kind who buys and sells books through Internet dealers, the ones who sell from their homes and have no arrangement with an author or a publisher. In a recent score he paid 25 cents…plus shipping for a wanted book.

Recognizing that his frugal ways do nothing to support any aspect of the imperiled business that gives him pleasure, he warned, “No industry undermined by its greatest partisans will thrive long.”

By last count an estimated 20 million Americans were in book clubs. So, I’m thinking, what if all book club members made an attempt to buy local for one year? A bunch of car lovers are not going to bail out the auto industry. And all we can do about the banks is wait around and hope.

But we can do our own little bit to prop up those institutions that feed our habit.

I’ve shared my New Year’s intent with my book club and with friends in other book clubs, hoping to inspire others.

There’s been a mixed reaction. Some say they simply can’t afford to buy books full price. Some say it’s more efficient to buy online. My friend in the techie book business points out that it will take all styles of reading, be it by hand-held computer or audio to keep the book industry afloat. She defends some types of online ordering, like Amazon, which discounts books but also showcases authors and is a lifeline for book publishers. I get that. If there’s no other way to get your book, go that route. Otherwise get thee to your book store.

Some say that book stores need to try harder to woo their local readers. I don’t know. My book store gives out dog treats, has a reliable list of staff-recommended books and a nice selection of body wash and Moleskin journals.

We have to do this, I told a friend, or we’ll lose all our great hang outs. Like the smart, comfortable Cody’s, I said, down to only one store in the Bay Area. Oh no, she corrected me. The last one closed months ago.

Listen to the Real Women Buy Real Books radio segment on KRCB’S Another Voice.