Many people love good bookstores, but writers? We lose our heads over them. We tell stories about them. We form lifelong attachments to our favorites. We do not hate e-books—well, okay, some of us do—but we owe our careers, at least my generation of writers do, to the great independents, so many of them long gone now. 

Richard Russo on the shop where he fell in love with reading. Read the whole article on Parade.com.