Why We Still Need The Bookstore

Flying in the face of recent surveys, Ane’s 8th grade English class is just now starting a unit on the Holocaust.  Instead of reading “The Diary of Anne Frank,” as they did in this district when I was in 8th grade, they are reading “The Book Thief.”  As far as I can tell, they are still doing the same historical overview that we did to go with the reading assignments.

Well, Ane came home today and said, “I need to buy the book.”

I had seen her with a school copy of the book, so I asked what was going on.

The upshot of it is that while the teachers try to stagger the classes using the books at any given time, the school has only 60 copies to check out to students.  As you can guess, that only covers a couple of classes, and Ane’s English teacher informed the class that there was going to be a book shortage.  Ane, who likes the book so far, and has a few Barnes & Noble gift cards in her possession, asked if we could just go buy the book.

“How quickly do you need it?” I asked, knowing that Amazon could get it to us in two days, and that if we bought the book in-store, it would be the list price instead of the online price.

Ane sighed.  “Really, I could use it now.”

So, I got online and reserved a copy at the closest Barnes & Noble, and took her gift card (and a coupon that was about to expire for 15% off an in-store purchase) with me.  After dropping Tad off at art class, I drove to the store to pick up the copy I had put on hold.

Ane now has her own personal (and labeled with her name in it) copy of the book.  And that is why we still need brick-and-mortar stores, especially for books.  You never know when you are going to just need a book, right now.

I think she might let me borrow it, though.  When she’s not using it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2018 at 12:29 am and is filed under Children, School Days, Shopping Stories.
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