"You may have heard the news that the independent bookstore is dead, that books are dead, that maybe even reading is dead – to which I say, Pull up a chair, friend. I have a story to tell."

One morning, Ann Patchett woke up to find her city no longer had a bookshop. Surely, she thought, someone would open another. So she waited, daydreaming all the while about the bookshops of her childhood: ones that valued books over muffins; where staff passionately introduced readers to new writing; where buying a book was a social experience. And then she decided to take matters into her own hands and open her own bookshop.

A prize-winning novelist turned champion of independent booksellers, Ann Patchett celebrates the sheer joy of local bookshops in this inspiring essay.