Today for me I was thinking back to Waldenbooks. Basically the mall based bookstore for a good while before it's end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldenbooks
This is not my mall's Waldenbooks but gives you an idea of it's look.
Got my mind on this store because I wanted to simply view it's old website on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. But I couldn't get anything to load. At least nothing from the 1990's I tried. So I decided to simply post a bit of my history with the store. I first recall Waldenbooks from around 1989. Me and my wife started going to the newest local mall which at that time was the largest in TN. 2 floors actually. And it had 2 Waldenbooks in it. A larger one downstairs on one end and a smaller one upstairs on the other side. Now when I say large I dont mean Barnes & Nobel large. No no
Im speaking of a normal sized store about maybe like an Applebees.I visited religiously from 1989 to around 1996. I went to both every trip to the mall which was sometimes twice a week. Each store of course carried a lot of the same but they also might have stuff the other didn't. Plus both were staffed with very friendly and helpful workers. I dont have a single bad memory of the stores.
Back then I was a HUGE Star Trek fan. In 88 and 89 I started reading the Trek books from the 70s and 80s. At one point I bought a stack of about 25 books from a used book store at a quarter each. I had that stack months. Sometimes Id read one a night and others Id enjoy for a week. Thats how much I loved books and Trek in particular.
So back to Waldenbooks. I fell in love on first sight with these stores. Books as far as I could see. Not only books but my other reading hunger....PC magazines. Hardware, software, and most important, gaming! I could easily spend an hour in the store and always left with something even if Id just visited 3 or 4 days before...every week! I was about age 20 when I found the stores. I had no computer yet. In fact when I got my first PC in 1994 thats when my reading started to die...and it died pretty quick. But the PC was not the only reason.
Books started to creep up in price and Star Trek started making many more shows and themes into series of books. No longer was there simply TOS I was now dealing with STTNG, DS9, with Voyager coming and Engineers and so much. I was buying or seeing 3 or so new books each month. I could not get all those books plus PC stuff. Not only Trek though. My reading expanded to Star Wars when I found the Thrawn books. But back to Waldenbooks.
As you entered a Waldenbooks they had cardboard displays holding the new releases in them. I found them a great way to quickly see what was new for the month and save time. I actually liked them so well and knew the folks who worked there so well they started giving them too me. I used them in my own home until they became too crowded. I still have them all packed away though.
This is what they look like. All had their own graphics.
Another time at the Waldenbooks upstairs they had this HUGE starship Enterprise hanging from the ceiling. It was cardboard but was fully 3d. I had to have it! Lucky me they told me of it's giveaway when the promo was over and pointed me to the box to sign up. To this day Im not sure if it was because they knew me pretty well or luck but I won it and I hung it over my bed. The thing is the size of a queen sized bed but is assembled in parts. Have it still but stored flat.
But things change and as I said I stopped buying and reading altogether by 1996. It would be 4 years before I bought another book. Oh Id visit and look and remember sometimes. Waldenbooks was never far from my mind.
Then in 2000 Icewind Dale came out on PC. I loved that game so much. Enough to actually have me look up the books on it. I went back to my old Waldenbooks love and found R.A. Salvatore's The Icewind Dale Trilogy. Amazing to read. He does fight scenes like no one else. So I was back in the reading fold again. I had both worlds..PC and books. I read the Dark Elf saga and all other of his works. This went on until 2002 and The Thousand Orcs came out. I loved it but I wanted to wait until the entire The Hunters Blade trilogy released. Two more books. Im not sure why but I never got those books or back to reading.
But Waldenbooks was a sweet store and still a wonderful memory for me. Shelves full of books like a library but I could own them. Brightly well lit stores. friendly knowing employees. Great prices and always something on sale. Magazines that I loved. And it was all in the mall that me and my wife loved and visited so much.
I guess its no surprise when I look back and see them struggle and die. I had not gone in at least 8 years. the internet was huge in the 90s so by 2010 it was of course killing off a lot of stuff. It still surprised me a little back then. I saw the rise of giant book stores like Barnes and Nobel and also Books A Million come to town. I was thinking books were a big thing still. I didn't consider Amazon. I love the feel of a book, the smell. I loved to thumb through them and read the forwards and stuff. Waldenbooks was a dream factory. I just had to go in and find a new adventure. And even though Ive only bought magazines in the last 15 years really I still miss Waldenbooks. The times around those days.
Hope you've enjoyed this post. There are other stores Id like to post about. This just came right out of my head. If I do another store or stores I will try to plan out the writing and pics ahead of time. If you want more let me know. They are more about my memories and my life than the stores themselves of course.
