We have two bookstores in Port City, both independent. One has just been taken over by new management. They have de-cluttered the shop by removing a number of bookcases that were previously free-standing in the aisles. It’s opened up the space a bit, but fewer shelves = fewer books, and the selection has become really lean.

I went there earlier this week to look for Our Mutual Friend, because I just read Bleak House on a friend’s recommendation and fell in love with it to the extent that I wanted to stay ensconced in Dickens’s world (the book version, not the theme park). Also, I’m going to London and, in keeping with my policy of travel-themed reading, I thought it would be a good accompaniment for my trip.

There was not a single Dickens book on the shelves, which made me wonder if the new managers had re-catalogued their stock to put classics in a different category than contemporary fiction. I asked the clerk if that were the case.

“No, everything’s in the Fiction section,” she said. “We should have some Dickens…” she checked the computer, “…no, sorry, we don’t.”

“Your stock is getting kind of thin, don’t you think?” I asked.

“Well, not much comes out in the winter,” she said. “In spring there will be a lot more available.”

I did a quick double-take to make sure that I had not accidentally fallen through a trapdoor into the Gap. “But these are books,” I said. “They’ve been publishing books for hundreds of years. There’s, like, a whole back catalog to choose from. If you wanted to stock your shelves. You know, to sell some books and make some money.”

“We can order anything you like and have it here in a few days,” she said brightly.

Awesome. Now I can look up books on-line and walk all the way down here to order them from you and then walk back again, a week later, to pick them up.

When these guys go out of business I, for one, will welcome our Barnes and Noble overlords.