Bookstores are over.

or are they?

Today, my daughter wanted to go to Barnes & Noble for something, and I said, “Let’s go!” I always love going into a bookstore. It’s where her mother and I went on our first date, and it’s also where we took her as a baby on her very first outing.

The bookstore was a place where we could people-watch, drink coffee, read magazines (then put them back on the shelf), and just hang out. We did this when we were struggling students and when we were struggling new parents.

We would sit at the B&N Café for hours and watch the guy who taught Spanish for a living go through several students. I could hear them with their fake conversations as I read my magazine.

We didn’t spend much money, but we thoroughly enjoyed our time there. I’d occasionally get hooked on something I was looking at and end up buying it—sometimes a book, sometimes a magazine. As Chloe got older, sometimes a toy.

As we were walking in, I started telling her how the whole print business has been decimated by e-books, Kindles, and the Internet, and how I was deeply hurt when they took the couches out of the bookstore.

We stopped going as often; I got the hint: It wasn’t okay to loiter around like we used to before.

We walked in, and I expected it to be kind of dead because it was almost 6:30 PM on a Saturday. But it seemed quite busy.

There were a lot of young people around, and they were all very “into” a particular area of the store. There were 13-year-old girls talking about some scary books they were all reading.

I walked around and saw two ladies excitedly talking about some mystery books. There were people excited about vinyl albums; there was an enthusiasm that I could feel—and it wasn’t just people silently looking at books. It was like they came to meet each other. It didn’t feel like it was to meet a date, but to meet a friend who may be into the same thing as you are.

I started thinking, “Hmm, maybe I should buy some B&N stock!” (You can’t because it was bought by a hedge fund.)

It seems like they may actually turn the ship around. As I’m reading more and more about the company, it seems that they have decided to go hyper-local. The local bookseller gets to call most of the shots to personalize the store to fit the community in that area.

Looks like it’s all working. Chattanooga seems to be on board.

Oh, and I helped bring the chain a little bit closer to profitability because the item that Chloe wanted was a $20 Lana Del Rey magazine.