The other evening, I was reminded of how important it is to have a real bookstore close by, as I visited “Politics & Prose” in Washington, DC to listen to Richard Ford, one of my favorite American authors, talk about and read from his new book “Canada.” What a treat!

Ford, author of the Frank Bascombe trilogy and of short stories like “Rock Springs,” was on book tour around America, to some of the best bookstores the country has to offer: “Barnes & Noble” at Union Square in New York, “Books Inc.” in Palo Alto, California , “Powell’s” in Portland, Oregon, “Elliott Bay Book Company” in Seattle, Washington; “Square Books,” in Oxford, Mississippi, “Parnassus Books” in Nashville, Tennessee, “Tattered Cover Book Store” in Denver, Colorado, etc.

All of them are like little oases out there in America, and I always try to make time to visit them in my travels. To enter the mighty Powell’s in Portland or to stroll around on the many floors of Union Square’s “Barnes & Noble” or grab a cup of hot chocolate at “Politics & Prose,” and then listen to Richard Ford is just a great adventure.

Here in Washington, in this time of crisis for our bookstores, we are fortunate still to have “Politics & Prose,” and every time I visit San Francisco I am glad that the “City Lights Books” from the 50’s in the city’s North Beach is still open, or that small used bookstores like “Bookends” in the little Florence, Massachusetts, or “City Books” in Pittsburgh, have survived. Too many have already perished, like our “Borders” in downtown Silver Spring, MD, or the “Hungry Mind” in St. Paul, Minnesota, or Cody’s, the legendary bookstore in Berkeley, California, and like so many more, which Amazon can never replace.