There weren’t many stories in last week’s news about the closing of Borders Books & Music, no banner headlines or sweeping appraisals. What stories there were blamed the closing on a failure to keep up with today’s changing book market, and no doubt that’s true, but the real failure of Borders rests with us, not them. They opened hundreds of stores, provided millions of books, they even threw in a cafe. What did we do? We stayed home and used the computer. We sent email, we surfed the Internet, we loaded songs onto our iPods, we streamed new release movies, and finally we downloaded novels from Amazon.com onto our e-book readers. Our Kindles. Our iPads. Our Nooks. We ignored books, real books, and now books are starting to go away. It’s not just Borders. It’s B. Dalton. It’s Waldenbooks. It’s hundreds of independent bookstores across this nation, around this world.

The poet (and bookstore owner) Lawrence Ferlinghetti said books are trees made immortal. The book is mankind’s greatest invention. It is the permanent, unalterable home for the collected wisdom and imagination of the human race. Did you think that’s what the Internet was? It isn’t. Have you ever had your computer crash or your Kindle run out of battery power? Books don’t crash or freeze up, and they don’t need batteries. All you need to read a book is sunlight, or candlelight. If books go away, mankind loses its greatest freedom: to communicate directly with generations past and thinkers around the world, dependent on nothing but our own minds.

The Internet can be taken away, or altered, or controlled; just ask the people of China, North Korea, Iran or Syria. Books live forever and once printed cannot be deleted or changed. The only way to destroy a book is to ignore it.

No more books means no more book signings. How can an author sign a computer screen? No more books means no more collectible first editions. No more books means no more used books. But most of all, no more books means no more bookstores. No more Shakespeare & Co., no more Strand, no more City Lights, no more Powell’s, no more Auntie’s. To me, the most comfortable place in the world is a bookstore. It’s quiet, it’s filled with stories and ideas, there are chairs to relax in while you read, and you’re surrounded by people who love what you love. Bookstores are the grand repository of our culture, the culture we’ve spent centuries creating and reshaping. In bookstores you can find the oldest stories told by humans, and the newest, and the ones most people love. You can find everything from Homer to Marx to Rowling.

Ah yes, Rowling. Along with Oprah’s book club, J. K. Rowling was probably the most significant force in the bookstore world over the last two decades. Did you ever go to a midnight release party for the newest Harry Potter book? I worked all of them, and they were a blast; laughing children in homemade wizard outfits being chased by yawning parents, arts and crafts demonstrations around the store, owl trainers, live music, costume contests, and boxes and boxes of books behind the cash register, everyone waiting for the clock to tick down to the magic time. Lines snaking throughout the store, all the way back to the Philosophy section, the sun-bright smile of a kid when you finally hand her the book she’s been dying for since finishing the last one and now she can finally find out what’s next for Harry, Ron and Hermione. I’ll remember those smiles as long as I live.

I have worked in many bookstores (including Borders) and shopped in many more, and the fewer there are the less America feels like a land for dreams of a better life for ourselves and our children. We keep those dreams in books, and when books and bookstores go away where will we go to dream?