Was disappointed to learn today that the Barnes & Noble Bookstore, on Thomas Jefferson and M Streets, NW, in the heart of Washington, DC, is closing, December 31. An H & M superstore will be taking over the space. Just what Washington, DC needs — another H & M. Since April, it seems that most DC bookstores have closed: all Borders Books & Music, before that, Olsens Books & Music, Bartlesby Books… After the Barnes & Noble Bookstores (including the downtown Bethesda store) close, we will have the downtown B & N, good old Kramerbooks, and Bridge Street Books, next to the Four Seasons. Bridge Street’s owner owns his little federalist period building, so Bridge Street Books won’t close…. We will also have Georgetown U’s and George Washington U’s bookstores, and that’s all…for this big city… There is nothing more pleasurable for me, than to browse the Barnes & Noble shelves, with my dogs (known by name, by most of the bookstore staff), and discovering wonderful books and authors, that I might not have otherwise found, browsing on line… And what a joy it is to smell and touch, and read, a brand new book. … Both eBooks and paper books have places in our lives; one does not preclude the other… If you write to Barnes & Noble, or the Washington Post, about the closing of almost the last big bookstore in DC, it might save your bookstores, where you live, dear reader. Please write to: editor@washpost.com.Save Barnes & Noble, bricks and mortar stores!!!!
Annie
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
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