For the Harvard/Boston crowd, the Harvard Book Store is for sale.  I was last in this bookstore in the winter of 2005.  I was in Boston for a wedding and to visit my sister who was doing a semester at Harvard after Hurrican Katrina swept through New Orleans and her Tulane campus.  I bought Ian McEwan’s then-latest book “Saturday.”  There’s no telling what will happen when the bookstore is sold, but I found this comment from the owner, Frank Kramer, interesting:

“It is no secret that independent bookstores across the country are losing some of their book sales to the internet and other media. Despite this trend, people continue to need and enjoy a physical place in their communities and in travel destinations where the world of ideas and the literary mind are celebrated. Harvard Book Store has been that place for 75 years because we have sought out books and other products that our customers will buy. We will only remain profitable if we keep doing that.”

Speaking of interesting bookstores, the New Yorker notes this book-buying experience facilitated by Michael Seidenberg in New York.  “He envisions a hangout, where readers can relax in comfortable chairs with a favorite book,” the story notes.  Although Seidenberg does this in three room apartment (whose address is known only by a certain crowd), and by appointment only.  It’s certainly one way to go . . .

Crimson professor Robert Darnton has an interesting piece in the New York Review of Books on the future of the library in the age of Google.

Speaking of books, Seidenberg recounts this story when he was selling books on the street,

“Once, a couple stopped, and the man asked his girlfriend, ‘Do you want a book?’ She said, ‘No, I already have a book.’ ”