The attachment is something that I can understand. We don't have many independent bookshops in Canada, outside of the big cities, but used book stores still exist in many places. The selection is amazing and they tend to know their books.

Those who shop in the big box stores probably don't know what they're missing. Every time I walk into one of those stores I bump into a table of the current best seller, instead of a shelf crammed with a hundred different titles. Then I bump into a series of tables that have stacks of 20 different titles, instead of more shelves crammed with a hundred more titles. When I finally make it to the section I want all of the books look bewilderingly similar. It's all authors imitating each other, hoping that you'll randomly select them over the next guy.

But the small bookstores are different. I love used book stores because you have so many choices from so many eras. If I'm in the mood for 1950's science fiction, it's sitting next to a science fiction book written in 2010. If I'm in the mood for the philosophy of science, I can pick up a book from 1960 as well as one from 1990. The proprietor of the last shop I visited knew that I was a teacher, so he pointed out some (cheap) textbooks from the 1920's.

When I was in the big city, there were plenty of independent book stores. My favourite was one that specialized in education and child development. They had a multitude of titles on every title, the authors presented ideas from different perspectives, and many of the authors presented conflicting ideas. The staff were also enormously helpful. They knew what was on the shelves, and they knew what they could get from their suppliers. (Heck, they even knew what they could not get from their suppliers.)

The small book stores are worth saving. Unfortunately, it's tough for them to survive because the market is designed for mediocrity.