NEWSFLASH

Laredo, Texas has become the largest city in the U.S. with no bookstore. They’ve only had one, but in this town of 250,000 people with an illiteracy rate of around 50 percent, apparently the population cannot support a bookstore. This is shocking in America, but we’re finding more and more people in our travels who do not read—ever! Reasons given: not enough time, too much trouble, unable to read because of dyslexia, and who needs it with TV and the Internet? This is shocking.

I was taught as a child that as long as I could read, I could continue to learn, and that not reading would sentence me to a life of mediocrity. I didn’t need encouragement to read—I wanted to learn as much as possible about the world and about specific topics. I dreamed as a child of becoming an interior designer, and then when I finally started studying it, I was way ahead of most of the other students because I had read books and articles about the subject. When I later decided I wanted to write for a living, I was able to learn what college teachers had failed to teach me: namely, how to actually make a living at it. I learned that by reading.

There are literate people in Laredo who are trying to save their bookstore, or encourage another to open there. Meanwhile, they’ll have to drive around 150 miles to visit the nearest bookstore or shop online, if they have a computer and the Internet, or pick up what’s available in the neighborhood supermarket! If I depended on local supermarkets, my choices would be limited to such magazines as off-roading and other sports to the latest celebrity gossip, and maybe romance novels. Sorry, but those don’t satisfy my need to sometimes buy a good how-to book on gardening, carpentry, computers or a variety of interesting topics that I sometimes want to learn more about. Let’s all hope that we don’t see bookstores disappear from our towns.