We recently got excited when a major corporate bookstore chain reopened in our part of L.A., many years after we thought it had vanished from the face of the earth. We used to hate that bookstore chain with all we had. Now we were happy just to have a physical place nearby to browse and look at books.
Anything feels better than shopping through Amazon, whose offenses against Earth and working people are legion, from the reportedly dangerous conditions of its union-fighting warehouses to its alleged facilitation of Department of Homeland Security surveillance to the steep levels of emissions said to be coming from its delivery trucks and the over 400 million pounds of annual plastic waste it purportedly generates.
Fortunately, Los Angeles, despite what its haters say, is a reading town, from its bookworms to its script-readers, one full of great independent and time-honored bookstores that are almost as plentiful as the inspired authors this city has spawned.