I'm saddened to read that "Borders Accelerates Closing of Walden Outlets". I worked for Waldenbooks while in college, and they remained my primary retail outlet for the next ten years. I enjoyed the small, familiar store size and the staff where "everybody knew my name". I just don't get that with the larger Borders.

Publishers Weekly has more details on Waldenbooks closings, with the offline version of the story includes a map of closings by state. The hardest hit seem to be Pennsylvania and Ohio, with 24 and 16 closures, respectively. Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Hawaii are untouched, though I don't know how many stores they have, or how proportionate those that are closing are to those that are remaining open.

It seems an oversight to close a chain that serves a demographic Borders does not. When I was a kid, the local mall was robust enough to support two bookstores, one of which was a Waldenbooks. Now that mall has none, as its Waldenbooks (my alma mater) closed in January 2007, followed by the Auburn location in 2008 and Worcester in 2009.

In an email exchange, Leominster fantasy author R.A. Salvatore commented to me on the loss of his local Waldenbooks: "Ah crap. The loss of mall bookstores is one of the biggest losses to my industry and to American culture — they serve people the big box bookstores don't get to."

Are malls themselves on their way out? Or is there an erroneous perception that mall-goers don't buy books?

The Waldenbooks in Auburn, one town west of me, is closing, with all their stock being 40% off. Who can resist such a literary bargain? I bought several books I wouldn't've otherwise: Star Trek: The Buried Age; the Justice graphic novel (which I didn't realize is apparently only part one of three?); and Foundation. That last title is particularly exciting, as I've never read any of Isaac Asimov's work other than his robot short stories, and Foundation is a seminal novel I recently identified as missing from my reading background.

But why is this Waldenbooks closing a week from today? The Waldenbooks in Leominster, where I spent many a college hour behind the counter, closed a year ago this month. That leaves very few Waldenbooks left in this county, though a much larger Borders store exists just east of here. But that's a standalone; Waldenbooks are mall stores, and how can a mall be a mall without a bookstore? Are the larger Barnes & Nobles with their Starbucks cafés pushing out the smaller competition? Must every store be a megastore to survive nowadays? Whatever the reason, the lack of choices and availability to our favorite publications is a loss for everyone, not just the store employees.