I think I stepped into a Chapters bookstore twice in 2007, once for some magazines in the spring and then again just after my birthday since I got a certificate to Chapters amongst my swag. And there was a book, high on my want list, that I'd missed getting. I didn't want to wait until Christmas.
That visit schedule is probably about average for the last four years.
I used to love going to bookstores. When I was younger, it was all about comics. The pharmacy by Dr. Korntager's office when we lived in Malton. Bram Bram, the little hole in the wall variety store at the Avondale Mall when we moved to Bramalea. I discovered books by discovering the library across from the Avondale Mall. My first of many, many borrowed books was Andre Norton's Time Agent.
Occasionally, when accompanying my family on trips, I ended up somewhere where there were actual bookstores. It was like going to the best place on earth, even better than a candy shop. So many to choose from. Tarzan, the Secret Six and any book on animals. Hardy Boys were still a bit off in the future. But my grandmother sent me a bunch of Franz Striker's original Lone Ranger books. Took forever to read, but I can still remember shining a flashlight at The Lone Ranger and the Haunted Gulch while under the covers hoping desperately not to get caught by my father. I was a real sleepy-head at breakfast for most of that month.
By the time I turned 11, the only store in town was a Cole's in the big mall over on the other side of town. Out of reach. I inveigled a trip to it once or twice a year. But it wasn't until Bramalea City Centre opened up that I had free and unfettered access to bookstores. I was 16 at the time and Cole's had a store in the mall, as did an import from Britain, W.H. Smith.
There was maybe an overlap of 50 per cent between the two stores, but enough variety that you had to traipse from one to other to see if a new book by a favoured author had come in. It was great to see something new from Lin Carter, a reprint of an Edgar Rice Burroughs I hadn't read yet or the newest in the Perry Rhodan translations from Germany. It was just as great to go through the SF section looking at each cover, wondering if this was an author to try out. I bought lots of books on their covers alone. Some were just a pretty picture. Others were good enough to be added to my list of authors to buy.
My comic-buying had dropped off dramatically, but I found W.H. Smith carried British comics. I got caught up in following The Victor. I miss it to this day. It was a weekly, and so were my visits to the bookstore.
Later, as the teen years turned into adulthood, I discovered other book stores. I was very much a magazine collector and when I discovered Lichtmann's in downtown Toronto, I thought I'd died and gone to the great printing press in the sky. YARDS of magazines. It was the heyday of the magazine, just before the invention of the public version of the Internet (it'd been a military/academic tool for years). If I was in Toronto for a bridge tournament, a trip to Lichtmann's was a requirement, even if it was a fair hike from the Royal York Hotel. I later discovered a North York branch of the store. It was a hole in the wall, compared to the original. But it still had all the magazines I couldn't get in Bramalea. British and Australian bridge magazines, comic and SF magazines, National Geographic, book review magazines, Columbia Journalism Review and American Journalism Review, they were all there and nowhere else.
As the years went by, my book-buying slowed somewhat. I took up the comics hobby again. And I worked out arrangements to get magazines delivered to my door, sometimes by subscription, other times by working for companies that sold magazines. Instead of weekly visits, I tended to only go when the supply of reading material dwindled to less than knee-high.
Then Chapters arrived in Mississauga, shortly after the World's Biggest Bookstore opened in downtown Toronto. I like the WBB, but it never earned dedicated visits to just go there. I couldn't combine it with a bridge tournament, is was too far uptown. The Chapters branch, on the other hand, was several times larger than anything else within driving distance. It was worth the visit.
For awhile, I went monthly. Once again, I was able to get magazines out of reach elsewhere. Found some new ones. Going through the shelves was a return to the wonder years of yore.
And then the effect wore off. In just a year or two, I stopped going monthly and returned to the game of waiting until I only had a few reading options before jumping in the car. The cause, undoubtedly, was the arrival of the internet as my main reading source for non-books. Suddenly, the magazines, the real raison d'etre for going to Chapters weren't so important.
Chapters opened up in Brampton. It was less than important to me, since it opened all the way in the Northwest corner, almost as far as my Southeast Bramalea location was away from the Mississauga store. But I dutifully went and signed up for the discount card. For me, the discount card wasn't so great. They changed the rules several times, including making magazines exempt from discounts. I was already disliking this huge corporation. And it didn't help when it consumed (or was consumed by) its only real competitor, Indigo Books. Chapters had long ago bought out Coles and W.H. Smith/Smithbooks. The Bramalea City Centre Mall offered a Coles store that was (and is) a pale shadow of what IT was once. Don't even know if they sell their Coles Notes (analogous to Cliff Notes in the States) anymore. I don't go in.
I don't like Chapters. I don't have to go there much anymore. I get about 40 books a year from my family and friends, split between my birthday and Christmas. That's basically enough to keep me busy, when added to the electronic books I download to read on my PDA. I don't even have a Chapters patronage card anymore. No need to waste the 15 bucks or whatever it is these days.
And how do I know what books to ask my family for at gift-giving time? Amazon of course. I check out my favourite authors and then look at the suggestions of reviewers throughout the year. It combines into a twice-yearly published tome I like to call My Wishbook.
It's sad that a long love affair has come to such an end. I wonder if I will step inside a bookstore at all this year. If I do, it won't be a Chapters.
That chapter in my life is now closed.
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