Bereft of Books

I've lived in the western suburbs for nearly five years.  I miss Chicago's food.  I would pay big bucks for Art of Pizza or Hema's Kitchen to open restaurants out here.  Orange, too. I miss our friends and the lake.  I long for the parks and museums.

Most of all, I envy our former neighbors, who can walk to Harold Washington Library at a moment's notice. We lived so close that my arms never tired on the way home, even in winter. A few steps from Harold was a bookstore where we spent many a date night.

And then we moved to the suburbs.

In 2011, my suburb lost our last book store. How does that happen? Sure, there's Amazon (and yes, we're Prime members, so my books arrive within 48 hours of my purchase,) but I love wandering the aisles of a bookstore, looking for new friends to take home.

Our closest indie book store is twenty minutes away. And a big, big Barnes & Noble is just a bit further. But what does it say about my community that we no longer have a place to buy books?