In the magazine this week, James Surowiecki details the problems facing Barnes & Noble—its C.E.O. recently resigned, the Nook isn’t working out so well—and passes along this advice from an industry analyst: “Instead of succumbing to the temptation to reinvent itself, B. & N. should focus on something truly radical: being a bookstore.” I’d half-forgotten that Barnes & Noble was a bookstore, a very good one in certain ways, and I’d like to say thank you for the many pleasant hours in your well-stocked, air-conditioned aisles.

As a teen-ager who came of age before the Internet, the way I purchased books, CDs, and magazines now seems practically medieval. My town in Pennsylvania had one record shop, located on the blighted commercial street, which blasted hardcore music and where I once unwittingly purchased the début Indigo Girls album. The clerks, with their black-markered forearms, must have been too stunned to openly mock me. As for magazines, my parents subscribed to Time, and there was Rolling Stone at 7-Eleven.

There was a bookstore in the nicer part of town, though it was technically a gift shop, dominated by confusing pillows, potpourri, Moravian stars, and other regional paraphernalia. Someone who worked there had good taste in books. You could buy the latest Updike, college stuff like Shakespeare, and big history hardcovers. Even so, slim pickings. My friend and I would sometimes undertake a forty-five-minute drive to a larger, independent bookstore, where, like starving peasants in a bakery, we would amass stacks of potential purchases, and then winnow them down before the final approach to the cash register. Books seemed so scarce. I remember holding a copy of Charles Bukowski’s “Post Office” in my hand, debating whether or not to buy it, and deciding yes, since “I may never see this book again.”

Then a Barnes & Noble “superstore” came to town. It anchored a mini-mall with a large parking lot. The bookseller already had a cloudy reputation; I knew that its steep discounts on best-sellers were putting pressure on smaller bookstores near its locations. The retailer was then making its big expansion push. Soon after the opening, I drove over to check it out. Look, Starbucks coffee! A magazine rack filled with alien titles such as Zyzzyva, Utne Reader, and Foreign Affairs. A “Cultural Studies” section. An entire shelf full of Faulkner. Going to Barnes & Noble became a Saturday afternoon. It was as if a small liberal-arts college had been plunked down into a farm field.

Real college offered a college town with plenty of bookstores. When I moved to New York, the B. & N. flagship at Union Square functioned as a four-floor literary commune. The store actually encouraged lingering, which often descended into malingering, which often descended into grabbing books willy-nilly and parking yourself in a chair for an hour. It was not unusual to see people barefoot, or picking their nose. I haven’t stepped inside that store or any other Barnes & Noble for years. The city offered local book-buying options, and, as a conscientious participant in book culture, I came to regard B. & N. as just another soulless franchise.

Now, Amazon is the behemoth that book-lovers eye warily, and supermarket-like spaces filled with books are disappearing along with their smaller brethren. The hunter has become the hunted. The critic Virginia Postrel recently proffered the good idea that bookstores should monetize serendipity and require an entrance fee: “Charge for daily, monthly or annual memberships that entitle customers to hang out, browse the shelves, buy snacks and use the Wi-Fi.” Sign me up. I’ll be rooting for you, Barnes & Noble, however you reinvent yourself. I’ve come to see that, despite your flaws, you were a suburban beacon of knowledge, history, and community—noble indeed.

Photograph by Steve Mack/Getty.