If you care about books, you’ve probably heard that Borders is finally shutting its doors for good.

I’m so old I can remember when big national bookseller chains were villified for driving out small independent booksellers. Now these big national chains are being run out of business by Amazon and e-readers. One era’s Goliath is another’s David.

Anyway, I could never work up quite the same righteous ire against Borders and B&N that others could. Maybe that’s because where I grew up, there were no small, quirky independent booksellers. The best bookstore within a 50-mile radius was the Waldenbooks at the local mall.

So, the first time I visited a Barnes & Noble, I was pretty much in book heaven. As an undergrad studying philosophy in rural northwest Pennsylvania, I lusted after their selection of books–one that far outstripped any other bookstore I’d ever been in. Over the years, I’ve dropped a lot of dough at B&N and Borders and spent a lot of time browsing their shelves. Like most people, in recent years my book buying has shifted dramatically to online retailers like Amazon, so I can’t exactly lament what seems to be the inevitable. But there’s a part of me that’s defintely sorry to see them go.