Spent a morning with Sally (who’s now 11) at R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison last week. We hadn’t been there in ages, though a few months ago I co-led a book tour of New Haven that R.J. Julia sponsored. When I told Sally she’d been there years ago to see a live theatrical presentation based on the Junie B. Jones chapter-books, staged in front of a schoolbus in the bookstore parking lot, Sal said she thought she’d dreamed that.

There is something dreamlike about R.J. Julia. It’s the kind of comfortable, clean, well-kept, fully stocked independent bookshop that existed in most East Coast suburbs throughout the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, but these days are as rare as, well, most things to do with the printed word.

Many bookshops were driven out of business by large retail book chains such as Borders and B. Dalton, which eventually went under themselves. The few that have persisted have earned every sale they make: they are attentive to customers’ needs, buy new stock carefully, diversify their offerings without undercutting their main purpose (R.J. Julia has non-book gift items and jigsaw puzzles) and sponsor events which bring in the community as a whole and don’t just target the same diligent regulars.

But, just as wisely, in this age of immediate online purposes of anything made under the sun, these stores know that they can’t be all things to all people.

I read something on Facebook recently about someone seeing a front-cover review in the New York Times Book Review and being unable to find the book at several different independent bookstroes. The intimation was that indie bookstores, by not stocking the Times’ noteworthies, are not doing their job and are thus complicit in their own extinction.

As a former bookseller myself, I disagree. Much as many indie bookstores (and record stores for that matter) would like to have ready copies of any and every book any potential customer might require, that’s simply not how the business works. When my small shop was around in the late 1980s—when you could still dream of making a go at such a career—the spate of New York Times-honored books were a snare and a delusion. The problem was the same then as now—bigger dealers had easier access to them, could buy them in greater quantities, could sell them (often at discounts greater than the profit margin—“loss leaders,” as they’re known) and didn’t mind remaindering them if they didn’t sell. Back then, it was the was the brick-and-mortar retail chains we were fighting. Now, it’s obviously Amazon, and in some cases the online presences of the publishers themselves.

Bookstore economics are largely concerned with shifting around large amounts of “credit” from publishers. The smaller you are, the tougher that is to do. Stocking every single book recommended by the New York Times is one way of distinguishing your shop, but you might be better off special-ordering those titles when requested and using your funds to develop a niche where you’re not in direct competition with major retailers. Besides, most independent bookshops are so small now that they couldn’t stock all the books mentioned in the Times if they wanted to. Most are too small to contribute to the sales reports that make up the Times bestseller lists, or to influence which books get continued press coverage. Independent bookshops don’t ignore the Times. They just have to carefully select the titles they know will have appeal to their regular clientele, and which might have a chance to sell if they’re still on the shelves after that issue of the Times Book Review has expired.

A well-curated stock of mysteries—or histories, or whatever genre suits the community—where customers learn to trust the tastes of the curator, can be worth much more in the longterm than a stack of Times-reviewed tomes where the recommendation has national but not necessarily local importance and in which the bookseller might have only casual interest.

When I was in Montreal last summer and expressed amazement to a native there that there were so many small bookshops in the city, he replied “It’s because Amazon doesn’t do a good job with French language books.”

You should not berate your poor local indie bookstore for not carrying the book you read about in the Times. Instead, investigate what they have on their shelves. It’s called browsing, it’s a lost art, and you don’t need a program or guidebook to participate.

Sally and I walked into R.J. Julia Booksellers last Thursday with no idea at all of what books we might buy, or if we might buy any at all. We were vaguely cognizant that (other daughter) Mabel needed the next book in one of one of the Rick Riordan new-myth series; we found what she needed at once, and Sal found two hardcover novels-for-kids for herself. We also got Chris Grabenstein novel (the whole family had enjoyed his Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library), a small book on hummingbirds (we’ve put up a feeder at home), Judd Apatow’s new collection of interviews with comedians, the autobiography of Alice Cooper Group bassist Dennis Dunaway, and a jigsaw puzzle. That’s as wide-ranging a bunch of books as I could possibly hope for in any decent small bookshop. (I browsed hundreds of contemporary novels and classics, but held off buying any of those simply because I’ve got a huge backlog of fiction to plow through at home.)

The next day I was in downtown New Haven, and felt guilty about not buying books even more locally. So I went into Atticus on Chapel Street. There, I picked up Mark Adams’ Meet Me in Atlantis, which has been unavailable at the public library for weeks, and a book I didn’t think I wanted, but realized upon browsing it that I very much did: A. Brad Schwartz’s admirably even-handed and well-researched Broadcast Hysteria—Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News.

I don’t let some media talk me out of appreciating other media. I can be distracted, but I make an effort to maintain balance. Books are real, a foundation of my home and life. R.J. Julia and Atticus (and many many other shops) are not to be walked idly by. They are of a fundamentally different character than websites and catalogues, and should be embraced for their knowledge, their sense of community and their unique attachment to the wonders of the written word.

Convergence concluded a few weeks ago. I bought the multi-universe myth-remix, which consumed all the DC Comics titles for two months, diligently at the cost of around a dozen comics a week.

Each title featured its own superheroic battle, a fight predetermined by an evil god who announced his intentions via a declaration that could be understood by every sentient being in every city he addressed. These were cities he’d already imprisoned in sphere, Stephen King Under the Dome style, for a year. The fights offered escape. They also allowed heroes to regain the powers they’d lost while stuck in the spheres.

I’m a pacifist, but I nevertheless enjoyed Convergence as a series of shortform strategic exercises. Some of the battles even ended in willful surrenders, stalemates or truces, in order to avoid bloodshed.

In some ways, the Convergence stories were the essence of superhero comicdom, the protagonist’s standard myths boiled down to a two-issue arc. Their origin tales were retold, then rebirths were experienced. The year of powerlessness allowed each hero to reconsider the meaning of his or her life, before being ordered to fight a presumed foe. These super-scraps are undertaken in order to save cities, which gives Convergence a sense of civic duty. There’s also a lot of flying and hurtling. (under the domes which encapsulate these cities, it’s still possible to soar, apparently.)

There’s a lot of realignment of the DC universe implicit in Convergence. Some fat has been trimmed away—whole planetary systems of fat. There’s been some clarification and prioritizing as, post-Convergence, DC unleashes dozens of new titles which so far seem distinguished by a lighter tone and a greater sense of humor. Some churlish fanboys have written off the whole Convergence endeavor as an easy way to keep the punters happy while the DC editorial offices made a grand move from New York to California. That attitude is unnecessarily caustic even for comic-realm critics. First, there are so many easier ways to fill two months of a publishing schedule than to create an interlocking story involving over 50-titles, hundreds of characters and dozens of artists and writers. Second, Convergence holds up remarkably well on its own terms, as a full-scale mythology marked by many small adventures and a grand earth(s)-changing conclusion. I look forward to rereading the whole stack of comics and happily reconverging soon.