Requiem For A Bookstore

Boston’s independent WordsWorth bookstore closed this fall, offering yet one more reminder of how much is lost to a community with the failure of an institution that everyone had assumed would always be there. “Sitting among the litter, among posters of authors such as Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jack Germond and not far from a dracaena that looked dried out and defeated, [the store’s owners] pondered what they’d lost to bankruptcy — the bookstore at 30 Brattle Street that had led to their meeting and, eventually, their marriage, their two children, and all the exhilaration derived from nearly three decades of doing what they loved, which is living among, or… just touching books.”